


Counterpoint

by Azzandra



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dubious Consent, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Meaningless Consent, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 16:42:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 44,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for a <a href="http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/39135.html?thread=42633439#cmt42633439">prompt on the kink meme. </a></p>
<p>Karkat comes to the Derse Dreamers as a gift. Not under the best of circumstances, but they make the best of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was pretty long, but here's the gist of it:
> 
> _The StriLondes are Derse royalty, a sort of divine rulers who use their energy, as Derse Dreamers, to stabilize their realm._
> 
> _As they reach sexual maturity, they need a partner to work out sex energy with, in order to keep the universal balance or something (work with me here, group porn scenario is kinda vague but could be improved upon :P)_  
>  The dersites have energies too similar to balance out the StriLondes'.
> 
> _The Kingdom of Alternia, aware of this and looking to keep in good relations with Derse, offers them a "virgin sacrifice" for the purpose of relieving sexual frustration that could actually screw up the universal balance._  
>  The Condesce, keeping to her title, does want to slip some insult into the gift, so she offers them Karkat, who had been revealed as a mutant and was going to be culled, but is spared for this purpose.

The first time any of the Derse Dreamers lay their eyes on the troll slave, he is refusing to look at anything other than the floor; possibly because he can't lift his head. The collar around his neck is a massive, gaudy thing, made out of gold and studded with so many gems that together they probably add up to half his body weight, not that there is very much of him to begin with. In contrast, he is dressed only in a pair of bright red pants, out of a fabric so filmy that it's just this side of transparent.  
  
He shuffles along with the pull of a chain attached to his collar, and the troll holding the other end is certainly not hesitant about pulling.  
  
Rose's lips barely move as she whispers, “That collar is too tight.”  
  
“Just keep smiling,” Dirk instructs, even as his own face is frozen in an impassable mask. None of them are smiling, not even Roxy.  
  
The Alternian ambassador gives an oily smile as he steps forward and starts on a dry but politically mandated speech about how deeply delighted the Condesce is to be offering them this gift and how honored she is that they've accepted it and what good things this heralds for the future of the relationship between their two kingdoms.   
  
When the ambassador gets to this last part of the speech, Dave makes a sound in his throat and leans towards Rose, sitting on the throne to his right.  
  
“Yeah, I think we all know the only reason she's so generous is because she knows she'd be caught in the blast radius if things went pear-shaped here,” he whispers.  
  
“And I think we all know that the reason we're accepting is because we don't want to be the center of that blast radius,” Dirk interjects dryly.  
  
Dave keeps quiet for the rest of the ceremony.  
  
He doesn't really look at the so-called gift. He looks at the ambassador, at the crowds of courtiers observing these proceedings, at the windows, at the ceilings, but he really doesn't have it in him to look at the poor, miserable troll being trotted out before him.   
  
It reminds him much too keenly of when Prospit sent over four purebred horses for Dirk's birthday and they were presented before the four thrones in a similar manner. Back then, Dirk could barely restrain his delight. Now he regards these proceedings with a stony expression.  
  
Roxy is just as quiet, chewing her lip thoughtfully. Dave catches her eye (as well as he can with his shades on) and she shakes her head slightly, as if to say nothing's wrong. She's lying, but then again, they will all feel much better once this spectacle is over.  
  
When the ambassador's speech finally winds down, Rose rises and says a few words as well, amounting to little more than 'thanks a lot, now get the fuck out', and the ambassador's smile turns sour and forced at this quick dismissal.  
  
The slave is pushed forward—the ambassador prods him in the ribs with his cane, and the way the tinier troll flinches is  _awful_ —and he stumbles. His handler reluctantly gives up the chain to a Dersite servant and bows to the Dreamers, but only as low as etiquette dictates and not a millimeter more.  
  
Rose dismisses court and all four Derse Dreamers leave the throne room together. It's only at this point, as they are filing out of the room, that Dave looks at the troll, and by chance, it is at the same time that the troll dares sneak a glance at his new masters. His eyes flick towards them so quickly—a flash of red, a tiny twitch of the head—that Dave almost thinks he imagined the gesture. But his stomach still ties itself in knots and disgust settles deep in his bones. He doesn't know how he's going to do this.


	2. Chapter 2

Karkat looks around himself and feels another small part of his soul die off.  
  
It's not just that he is alone for the first time in months (though it is at least partly this) and it's not that his life has taken yet another unexpected turn that is bound to have more misery in store for him (though it is also partly this as well).  
  
It's that everything around him is beautiful. He looks around at the cushioned furniture, the soft rugs, the lovingly painted walls, and he wants to start crying and never stop. This is another torture chamber, he thinks over and over. Like all the pretty rooms before it, these delicately luxurious surroundings are here only to bear witness to yet more humiliation on his part, new debasement and pain. That his tormentors this time will be human instead of troll is an insignificant detail.  
  
He wishes, more than ever, for the filth of the streets. He wants to sleep in the gutters and rummage through garbage again. He wants to never know the feel of silk or the sight of gold. He wants the dignity of being a street urchin, dirty and starving, but at least free. He wants to be go back to the times when he could still naively dream about a better life.  
  
Those things aren't for him anymore, though. He crawls to a corner of the room and wedges himself behind a cabinet, making himself as small as possible. He'll be punished for hiding, but he'll be punished eventually anyway. At least this way he can delay it for a while.  
  
He pulls his knees to his chest and tries to lean his forehead on them. The collar digs painfully into his neck and shoulder, so he doesn't quite manage it. He lets his head hang, hovering just inches short of his kneecaps. He shivers, so cold and tense that his muscles are aching from it. He tries to stop himself because it's making his chain rattle, but he can't.  
  
Then he hears the door open.  
  
He inhales and freezes, keeping still by strength of will alone. Just a few seconds, he just needs a few seconds of peace and solitude before everything starts again. If he can get these few seconds, he knows he can make it through whatever they have in store for him.  
  
The door closes and he can hear footsteps, just a few, soft and almost noiseless.  
  
“Li'l dude, where are you?” a feminine voice calls out.  
  
Karkat starts sobbing at that moment. His shaking returns with a vengeance, he can't stop it anymore, and he just keeps sobbing even though tears haven't even had the time to gather in his eyes.  
  
The sound of steps returns now, closer and closer, and Karkat balls himself up, hugs his legs so tight that his blunt useless claws are leaving gouges in his calves. He doesn't dare look up when he hears his new mistress crouch in front of him. He only braces himself for the pain that is sure to come.  
  
“Aww, I'm sorry,” she says nonsensically. “I know, it's not fair.”  
  
Karkat doesn't understand what she's talking about. He can't decipher the mind game she's trying to play with him and that just scares him more. He chokes back his sobs, smothers them before the tears have time to fall. This new mistress might not like some mutant slave trailing snot all over her nice room.  
  
She drops down out of her crouch suddenly—Karkat flinches at the sudden motion—and crosses her legs under her.  
  
“Sorry, didn't mean to startle you,” she says. Karkat can't hear mockery in her voice, though he's sure it's there. He sneaks a look at her, but isn't brazen enough to make eye contact. Her chin is fairly safe, though, even though her darkly-painted lips are smiling slightly. He hates it when highbloods smile; it's never at anything funny.  
  
She pats down her skirts in a soft ruffle of fabric and then reaches a hand down her bodice. Karkat almost makes a choking sound, but she just pulls out a handkerchief.  
  
“Here you go,” she says, and with slow and deliberate motions reaches out and presents the handkerchief to Karkat.  
  
His eyes flick around wildly, trying to figure out what she has planned for him. It's a trap, it has to be, and he'll be forced into it anyway, but he still wants to see where it's springing from.  
  
“Go on, take it, wipe your eyes,” she adds when she sees him hesitate.  
  
That's an order, he realizes with relief. At least when he follows orders, the odds of getting punished are lower. He takes it carefully, making sure not to touch her hand with his filthy fingers, and he dabs it at his eyes. The handkerchief is white, and every touch makes it stained with pinkish-red. He looks at the stains in distress. He could get punished for those, never mind that she was the one who ordered him to do this. He is still the one at fault.  
  
“Now blow your nose,” she instructs.  
  
Karkat stares at the handkerchief confused for a bit too long, so she slowly reaches out and plucks it from his hand, unfolds it once, and then pinches it over his nose.  
  
“Blow,” she says.   
  
Karkat inhales quickly and blows so hard his vision blacks out.  
  
“Good. That wasn't so bad, was it?” she asks cheerfully. She folds up the handkerchief, but doesn't stick it back down her bodice. She sets it aside instead. “Now let's have a look at you.”  
  
She presents both her hands like she's showing him that she doesn't have any weapons, which confuses Karkat momentarily. Then her hands start moving towards him, very slowly. Karkat expects to have his teeth inspected or his ribs prodded.  
  
When she sets her palms against the sides of his face softly, Karkat almost opens his mouth automatically, but she just tilts his head up, gently but firmly.   
  
“It  _is_  too tight,” she says, frowning.   
  
Karkat doesn't understand what he's done wrong, until he realizes she's looking at his collar.  
  
“I don't suppose you have the key for this?” she asks with a wry smile.  
  
“No, Mistress,” he says, looking away. His voice is cracked and dry. He hasn't been punished for anything yet, but it's coming. Any minute now, it's coming.  
  
“That's alright, we'll do this the easy way,” she says.  
  
Her hands go lower and Karkat can feel her grip the collar. Before he can wonder what she intends, he feels something... odd. The tightness of the collar lessens he can feel it crawl and slip over his skin, even though he knows that can't possibly be right.  
  
When she pulls back her hands, the collar is warped, as if the gold melted at her touch. She throws it down to the side, and when it hits the carpet it makes a muffled thud, solid once again. Karkat stares at the four dark grooves in the gold, corresponding with the human's fingers. Magic, he remembers belatedly. The Derse Dreamers are powerful sorcerers.   
  
The Mistress takes away the length of chain as well, dragging it out from Karkat's corner and piling it neatly next to the discarded collar.  
  
“There, that was easy, wasn't it?” she says. “Now do you mind if I take a closer look at your neck?”  
  
Karkat presents his neck promptly. A lifetime ago, every instinct would have screamed against doing such a thing. Presenting one's neck to strangers was dangerous. Now, not doing it was even worse.  
  
She reaches out again, still in that slow, careful manner as before. Karkat couldn't figure it out before, but now he suspects that maybe it's her way of demonstrating that he is so little a threat to her that she doesn't even need to display any aggression. But he knows that, he doesn't need to be reminded.  
  
Her fingers are not as cold as those of troll highbloods. Karkat takes some reassurance from this, though not much. He closes his eyes and lets her do whatever she wants. She touches the skin around the bruises and sores left by the collar, but doesn't poke at them directly.  
  
“Alright, we can fix this,” she announces cheerfully. “If you want to come out from here, that is. Do you? Want to come out?”  
  
“Whatever you want, Mistress,” Karkat replies.  
  
She looks dismayed. Something inside Karkat crumples as he realizes he hasn't given the correct answer.  
  
“How about you call me Roxy? Can you do that?” she asks.  
  
“Yes, Roxy,” he replies quickly. She looks satisfied now, and Karkat tries not to preen too obviously at getting it right.  
  
“And what's your name?” she asks.  
  
“Whatever you want it to be, Roxy,” he recites.  
  
“No.” She shakes her head. “That isn't what I mean. What's your  _name_. Yours, not the ones people choose to call you.”  
  
“It's... Karkat, Roxy,” he answers hesitantly.  
  
“Karkat!” she says, delighted. “Nice to meet you, Karkat! I would shake your hand, but I get the feeling that's something we'll need to build up to slowly. Now... are you hungry?”  
  
He's starving. He hasn't been able to eat even the little he is usually given since the collar went on two nights ago, and he's barely had enough to drink.  
  
“Yes?” he answers hesitantly.  
  
“Well, that's an easy fix.”  
  
Roxy shuffles backwards and then springs to her feet. She goes to a velvet cord next to the bed and pulls. A servant appears in a few short moments and Roxy gives her a few rapid-fire orders. The servant nods once, unfazed by his mistress's excitability, and departs again.  
  
Roxy goes to a table set before a window. She pulls out a chair and then looks back at Karkat.  
  
“Do you want to eat there, or do you feel up to facing the horror of the dreaded dinner table?” she asks giggling.  
  
Karkat peeks out around the cabinet at Roxy. He wants to stay in his corner. It's safe there, nothing bad has happened to him in this corner. But she must want him at the table, or else she wouldn't ask. Or maybe she wants to see if he's getting any ideas, if he thinks he's just as good as real people and needs to be put back in his place. Maybe if he sits here, she'll know he's good and obedient, and she won't hurt him.  
  
Or maybe if he doesn't go to the table, she'll come over and kick him or drag him out by the hair or hurt him with her magic. He hasn't been hurt with magic yet. Psionics and mindcontrol, but not human magic.  
  
No, but he doesn't want the sanctity of his corner violated like that. He'll go out and take his beating in the open, and maybe afterwards she'll allow him to crawl back and lick his wounds in peace.  
  
So he leaves his corner. He gets up to his feet, his knees popping in protest, and walks towards the table with small steps. He chances a look at Roxy and sees her beaming in approval, and that takes some of the tension away.  
  
He stops in front of Roxy, waiting for instructions. She seats him down in the chair she first pulled out, at the head of the table.  
  
God, he hasn't sat down at a dinner table since the last Solstice Feast, and even then, it was only because he made for such a resounding insult. The Condesce put him in the seat of some unfortunate seadweller who had slighted her in some way, all to remind everyone there that it was within her power to do it, that they were all rich and powerful because of her whim alone. It was a bittersweet reprieve at best for Karkat. A few times, he managed to sneak a few delicious morsels of food, but his neighbors at the table took every opportunity to poke and kick him. The indigoblood at Karkat's right even spent a good half hour repeatedly poking him with eating implements, laughing so much that tears were streaming down her face.  
  
So it is not without some apprehension that Karkat takes the seat. When Roxy sits down adjacent to him, he is convinced this is another cruel highblood joke in which he will serve as the punchline.  
  
“Don't worry, nothing bad's going to happen,” Roxy says. It sounds like a promise coming from her.  
  
Maybe that's her game, Karkat considers. She's playing out some pale fantasy at his expense, before she and her siblings sink her teeth in him and leave him too unsightly for it.  
  
“Are you cold?” she asks. “You must be cold. Harem chic isn't exactly weather appropriate this time of year. You have some clothes in the wardrobe. We had to guess at your size, so you might want to roll up the cuffs on most of them, but we'll get a tailor to come in as soon as possible and get your measurements.”  
  
“Yes, Roxy,” Karkat says for lack of a better answer. She's offering to dress him now. She  _is_  playing moirails. Now his job is to not break the illusion.  
  
“Also, it just occurred to me that you might not realize this, but this is your room,” she continues. “You'll be living here while you're staying with us.”  
  
She's lying, Karkat knows. They wouldn't waste a mousehole on filth like him, much less a room like this. But it's part of the fantasy, the highblood playing at magnanimity. He mustn't argue.  
  
“Yes, Roxy,” he says.  
  
“You're safe in here, okay? Nobody's going to come in without knocking or unless you called for them. Well, unless there's like a fire or something or you're screaming for help or you haven't come out in days, but that's just worst-case-scenario stuff. I'm sure your time here's gonna be great. You'll see. Make the best out of a bad situation, you know? When life gives you lemons, make an omelet. Or something like that.”  
  
“Yes, Roxy.”  
  
“Okay, no, don't make an omelet out of lemons, that shit's gross. Don't just agree with everything I say.”  
  
Karkat's face screws up in indecision at that last contradictory order.  
  
“N...no?” he says slowly.  
  
“Oh,” Roxy says, slapping her forehead. “Geez, I'm sorry. That wasn't an order, that was just me prattling like a doofus. Ugh. I'm so bad at this, and I'm still the best option. We are a bunch of dweebs, I tell ya. I know we seem scary now because we're strange and alien and, I guess, we sort of own you? But once you get to know us, you'll never take us seriously again, I guarantee you.”  
  
“Yes, Roxy.”  
  
“You know, it's really hard to hold a conversation with someone who only ever says the same two words.”  
  
“Yes, Roxy.”  
  
She lapses into silence. Karkat realizes belatedly that her last remark was meant to be a reprimand, but he wouldn't have known what to say otherwise anyway. Yes, no, master, mistress, these are all safe words. He doesn't want to risk anything more until he learns what is expected of him from his new masters.  
  
The door opens and a servant pushes in a tray cart.  
  
“Food's here,” Roxy announces and jumps out of her seat.   
  
Karkat continues staring at the tablecloth. The smells wafting through the room are enticing and much too mouthwatering to be coming from anything meant for him. It will make his slop taste better, though. He can imagine a lot with smells like that around him.  
  
So he nearly falls out of his chair when Roxy shoves under his nose a plate laden with the most delicious-looking food he's ever been allowed close to.  
  
He looks up at her for permission and she smiles widely.  
  
“Eat up,” she says.  
  
Without missing a beat, Karkat digs in.  
  
*  
  
Roxy arrives to the council chambers just as the sun starts going down. Inside the room, at a table big enough to seat at least a hundred people, sit only three.  
  
“How did it go?” Dirk asks.  
  
Roxy sighs deeply and falls into a chair.  
  
“It's bad, Dirk,” she replies. “I don't even know what they did to him, but it's heartbreaking to watch. He's just so... scared of everything.”  
  
Dirk leans over and pats her arm reassuringly.  
  
“So who's up next?” Dave says.  
  
It's quiet around the room.  
  
“Maybe Roxy should go back to him,” Dave starts suggesting, “since he's familiar with her now.”  
  
“No, I'll go,” Dirk says. “I've already got the next step in our campaign of seduction planned out.”  
  
“Yeah, because that doesn't sound skeevy as fuck,” Dave snorts.


	3. Chapter 3

Hands in pockets and with his usual loose-limbed grace, Dirk walks towards Karkat's room. It isn't a long walk, and anybody who doesn't know Dirk as well as his siblings would not have guessed that he is stalling, but that was, indeed, what he is doing.  
  
Even so, the sight of Karkat's door seems to come much too soon, almost startling him with its sudden appearance. Damn these ninja doors. Man can't walk his own halls without getting ambushed by them. A right menace they are.  
  
With a last furtive look around to make sure nobody was there to witness the brief crack in his cool composure, Dirk knocks on the door. He would have preferred a window. Sudden mysterious appearances on an intended's windowsill are more in his wheelhouse, but in this case, it is more important to foster a sense of security and privacy than impress.  
  
Dirk waits for a long time before the door cracks open. Karkat stands there with a mildly bewildered expression, like he can't actually believe somebody really knocked, but when he recognizes Dirk, his eyes fall to the floor and his shoulders hunch.   
  
He's already  _small_. Not just short, but meek and emaciated too, and he's making himself even smaller. The clothes he's wearing are much too loose on him. The shirt hangs on him so low that Dirk can see the sores on his neck and shoulders, raw and red, but covered with the thin white film of whatever ointment Roxy used on them.   
  
Not to be rushed, Dark puts his hands in his pockets and leans against the doorframe.  
  
“Sup. You gonna invite me in?” he asks.  
  
Karkat gives him a look that is both gobsmacked and panicked.  
  
“Yes, Master?”   
  
“Nah, call me Dirk.”  
  
“Yes, Dirk.”  
  
He still says the name exactly like he says 'Master', though. Dirk tries not to frown.  
  
A long moment passes.  
  
“Well?” Dirk prompts.  
  
“Uh...?” Karkat looks up in confusion.   
  
“You gotta say the words, little man. If you want me to come in, that is. Do you want me to come in?”  
  
“I... yes, Dirk?”  
  
“This ain't a quiz, kiddo. The right answer's the one that's true for you, not the one you think I wanna hear.”  
  
The only thing this has accomplished, however, is making Karkat even more confused and panicky-looking. Dirk feels like a heel. He's messing this up.  
  
“I can go or leave. It's no skin off my nose,” he says, shrugging one shoulder.  
  
“Come in?” Karkat says, still sounding like a kid unsure if he's giving the right answer in school.  
  
How does someone even get like this, is what Dirk would like to know. How does a person become incapable of distinguishing between what they really want and the urge to please those around him?  
  
Well, it's not a puzzle he can solve loitering in hallways, so he chooses to believe that Karkat is genuinely inviting him in.  
  
“Thanks. Won't be imposing on you for long,” Dirk says. He removes himself from the doorframe and strolls into the room. When he passes Karkat, he raises his arm slowly, telegraphing his movements, and ruffles Karkat's hair.  
  
The way the troll sits perfectly still under his hand makes Dirk believe that that was a bad move. He probably got touched against his will all the time, he probably has no concept of casual physical affection by this point.  
  
Dirk makes a note to himself to keep that in mind for the future.  
  
“Nice digs,” he says, as if he isn't already familiar with the room. Most guest rooms look alike in the palace, but this one has the advantage of being only a short walk away from the chambers where he and his siblings live.  
  
Dirk walks around the room, taking stock of it.  
  
Nothing's out of place. In fact, most everything looks untouched. The only sign anyone's even been in the room is the table, piled with plates licked clean of food. Dirk knows that Roxy left Karkat with a lot to eat before she left. If Karkat's already eaten it all, he must have been starving for a long time and will probably gorge himself until he's back to his normal weight.  
  
Dirk looks back at Karkat. He's still standing by the door, hand clenched on the door handle and gaze set to the floor.  
  
“If you're still hungry, you can always ask for more food,” Dirk says. “In fact, that's your job from now on.”  
  
Karkat tilts his head slightly to the side, looks at Dirk through the fringe of wild hair falling over his face. There's only a glimpse of red eyes to suggest just how attentive he's being.  
  
“We don't have time to fret over you all the time,” Dirk says. “So we won't know when you're hungry or when you're cold or when you need a bath. So, from now on—and feel free to take this as an order if that'll make you feel more comfortable—it's your responsibility to call for more food when you're hungry or ask for anything you need. That clear?”  
  
Karkat nods uncertainly.  
  
“And don't be afraid that you're asking too much. We like to keep the servants jumping.”  
  
Understanding passes over Karkat's face, though what exactly he just understood is beyond Dirk. Probably something completely messed up that they're going to have to unteach him later. For now, it'll do if he just learns a modicum of independence.  
  
“Alright, then. You're still hungry?” Dirk asks.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Are you asking  _me_  if you're hungry? Do you think I'd know?”  
  
“No,” Karkat replies, looking a bit stricken. The kicked puppy expression is actually, physically hurting Dirk's heart, but he remains expressionless and firm. It's for his own good, Dirk assures himself.  
  
“So are you hungry?”  
  
Karkat nods firmly.  
  
“Yes, I'm hungry,” he says, meeting Dirk's eyes.  
  
“What are you going to do about it?”  
  
Karkat turns to look at the cord hanging by the bed, then back at Dirk. He teeters uncertainly on the balls of his feet, like he wants to move but keeps talking himself out of it.  
  
Dirk remains silent and motionless. He's just launched Karkat so far out of his comfort zone that he is but an indistinguishable speck of the horizon, rapidly disappearing into the stratosphere. It seems like such a horrifically cruel thing now, too.   
  
Maybe Roxy was right and it's too early and he needs time to adjust before he's taught to operate as an autonomous person again, but being pampered, treated like a child or a pet is not such a big improvement over being a slave. It would be a despicable thing to do to him, in a situation where the slippery slope to despicable is already greased to a shine.  
  
It doesn't look like Karkat will be able to do it, and there's a split second where it looks like he's ready to give up and resume his staring contest with the floor.   
  
Then, suddenly, he straightens himself up, walks over to the cord bristling with more confidence than Dirk would have expected, and yanks on it firmly three times. After that is done, he turns on his heels and looks back at Dirk. His confidence collapses in on itself like a house of cards and now he's just uncertain and scared all over.  
  
But Dirk has already had that little glimpse of the real Karkat, lurking somewhere beneath layers and layers of conditioning and defense mechanisms. Pleased, he gives Karkat a nod of approval.  
  
Karkat looks so relieved that he's about to puke.  
  
Dirk makes himself comfortable on a divan, stretching his legs out and hooking his arms around the backrest. When the servant arrives, she first looks at Dirk, awaiting orders, but Dirk only shakes his head and points his chin in Karkat's direction.  
  
Luckily, the servant takes her cue well, and turns to Karkat without missing a beat.  
  
“How may I serve, my lord?” she asks.  
  
Karkat wilts at this question, but to his credit, he doesn't look at Dirk.  
  
“I want... I... Could you bring me food?”  
  
“Certainly, my lord. What would you like?”  
  
“Uh... meat.”  
  
The servant blinks once, the only sign that she has been thrown off by the answer. Not for long, though.  
  
“Any particular kind?” she continues.  
  
“Just meat,” Karkat answers slowly. His composure is wavering. “But not cooked as much as... Uh. If you don't mind, just... don't cook it as much.”  
  
“You would prefer it rare, then.”  
  
“Is that when it's not cooked as much?”  
  
“Yes, that would be it.”  
  
“Then that's how I want it.”  
  
The servant curtsies and leaves. Dirk has never seen two people more perturbed by the conversation they've just had. He tries not to be amused by it.  
  
Karkat's eyes flicker in Dirk's direction again. Dirk rises to his feet.  
  
“You'll be getting a visit from Rose tomorrow,” he tells the troll while walking towards the door. “You know who Rose is?”  
  
Karkat nods quickly.  
  
“Don't call her 'Mistress'. Call her Rose. She'll be explaining some things to you.”  
  
“Yes, Dirk.”  
  
“Enjoy your food,” he adds in a softer voice.  
  
Dirk's already at the door when he hears a faint 'thank you'. He tries not to smile. Halfway down the hall, he fails.


	4. Chapter 4

Rose does visit Karkat the next day. Bright-eyed and smiling, she knocks at his door at the exact crack of dawn.  
  
Karkat opens the door, takes one look at her face and then leaves it open, taking three steps back. Rose observes this behavior with some curiosity. Dirk did not mention anything like this happening on his visit.   
  
“Good morning, Karkat,” she says.  
  
“Good morning, Rose,” he replies, then cringes like he expects something bad to happen.  
  
Rose tries not to sigh. Dirk made it sound like some progress had been achieved, but she is not witnessing anything of the sort here. Karkat thought he would get punished for calling her by name, even though Dirk instructed him to do so. This will take time to untangle, Rose thinks.  
  
“May I come in?” she asks.  
  
“Yes, Rose,” he says.   
  
As she closes the door behind her, she wonders if this makes Karkat feels cornered.  
  
“Would you mind if I checked on your wounds before we get started?”   
  
He looks confused by the question.  
  
“The wounds from the collar.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
He unbuttons his shirt—the thing is crumpled, has he been sleeping in it?—and raises his chin. He looks at the wall above Rose's head, still avoiding her gaze. Rose approaches, not too fast as to startle him, and inspects the skin of his neck and shoulders. It's swollen, but the sores and scrapes are scabbed over. The rest of his skin, though not sporting any recent injuries, is still marked with scars. Scratches, burns, claw marks—troll claw marks, at that, and there's something both deliberate and casually cruel in how these scars appear—all stretched out over a torso that is more bones than meat.  
  
“You will require more ointment. Please have a seat, this is something we should take care of before we leave.”  
  
“Yes, Rose.”  
  
Karkat is prompt about taking a seat, pulling out a chair at the table and turning it around. He does this with the shirt still hanging around his elbows, not bothering to pull it back up on his shoulders, and he sits down stiffly, his chin still raise.  
  
Rose finds the ointment in a dresser drawer. She uncaps it and inhales the pleasant floral smell before turning around to Karkat.  
  
He's so still and quiet it's a bit frightening. Rose is starting to have second thoughts about this, even though she knows the ointment would do him a great deal of good.  
  
“Would you like to apply it yourself?” she asks, tilting the small circular tin towards him. He can probably see the yellow cream inside if he looks, but he doesn't look.  
  
“Yes, Rose,” he answers automatically.  
  
“That isn't an order, Karkat,” she says, walking towards him.  
  
His mouth scrunches up. He looks like he wants to say something, but doesn't think it will be good for him if he does.  
  
Rose sighs and approaches him. Carefully, gingerly, she takes his hand and spreads out his palm—he lets her, of course, because he is nothing if not obedient—and puts the tin of ointment in his hand.  
  
“I will take what you've said not as an acknowledgment to an order given, but as a sincere statement of fact,” she says. “I know that I don't enjoy strangers' hands on me, and I suspect you have even better reasons than I do to dislike it.”  
  
Karkat looks at the tin, brows knitting together in thought. Something's percolating in his head, Rose can just see it, and she wonders what. Usually she'd ask and prod and speculate, but this is not the time for anything of the sort.  
  
She looks at his horns instead. They are, for lack of a better word, adorable. Small and rounded, they just barely peek out of his terrible nest of hair. She's never seen a troll with horns as harmless-looking as these, and she wonders if they've been sawed and sanded down. It would fit with the treatment he has endured up to this point, but the orange keratin looks too glossy for that to be true.  
  
In the time it takes her to muse on his horns, Karkat seems to have come to some conclusion.  
  
“Yes, Rose,” he says, and swipes a finger in the ointment, starting to smear it over his neck.  
  
Rose has to raise an eyebrow at that completely anticlimactic answer, but doesn't comment on it.  
  
She leaves him alone and goes to pick out his clothes. There's really not much that fits him well in the wardrobe. Trolls tend towards being larger than humans, but Karkat seems to be an outlier in that regard. He's about the same height as Rose, and she knows that she's on the short side even for a human.  
  
She finds a passable pair of trousers and a shirt that will probably fit Karkat well once he puts on some weight. Shoes are somewhat harder. Everything in the wardrobe is at least several sizes too big. Karkat is barefoot right now, as he has been for a very long time, probably. Rose decides it would probably be more comfortable for him to go without shoes than wear an ill-fitting pair.  
  
That visit to the tailor has become a great deal more pressing.  
  
After he finishes up with the ointment, Rose hands him the clothes and points him to a modesty screen. He dresses quickly and comes out.  
  
“We are going outside for a short excursion,” Rose explains as she opens the door. “If you will please walk with me?”  
  
He follows her wordlessly. Rose resists the urge to adjust his shirt or smooth down his hair. This time of day, there won't be anyone at the observatory to notice his sorry state anyway.  
  
Her heels click through the halls of the palace, but Karkat's bare feet don't make a sound. She takes him through the winding smaller staircases of the palace instead of the grand one leading to the entrance hall, but he still looks amazed at the stained glass windows adorning them. The marble must be cold under his feet, but he doesn't complain, he only admires the purple and gold mosaic patterns. When he feels her gaze on him, however, he retreats into himself.  
  
“If you want, one of us could give you a tour of the palace,” she offers, stopping under a stained glass window that Karkat was in the process of admiring. “You live here now, you need to learn your way around.”  
  
Karkat nervously looks around.  
  
“I'm sorry,” he says, sounding sad and resigned. “I won't look anymore.”  
  
Rose stops herself from sighing. He would take that as a reprimand.  
  
“Karkat, you don't understand your new position very well, do you?” she says patiently.  
  
“I was a gift,” he replies.  
  
“Is that what they told you in Alternia?”  
  
“They said,” he starts slowly, “that you would have a use for me here, since a mutant off-spectrum piece of shit like me has no place in troll society anyway.”  
  
Rose clenches and unclenches her fists, bur doesn't dare show Karkat how angry she really is.  
  
“Oh, Karkat. You don't have a  _use_  here, you have a purpose. There's a difference.”  
  
“...Yes, Rose,” he says after a long hesitation.  
  
Rose wishes, not for the first time, that she knew what Karkat is thinking. There has to be more there than fear and blind obedience in there.  
  
The hall is semi-dark, gray with pre-dawn light. But in Rose's mind, there is a bright web of sunlight over the darkness. The strands of the web are singing with possibilities, and when she picks at one, half of them dim. There is just one jagged line, stretching into the distance. If she can find the right words, the right gestures, if everything falls in place correctly, the ideal outcome can be achieved. There is little leeway for mistakes, though at least there is some at all.  
  
Rose shakes her head. The vision evaporates and leaves her just as unsure of what to do as before, but now aware that there is a way through.  
  
“Karkat,” she says calmly, “we're going to the observatory right now.”  
  
He nods and shuffles after her, silent and avoiding to look at anything.  
  
*  
  
The observatory is a small building tucked behind the palace, on a little hillock with a winding stone path. It is a quaint construction, predating the palace by a century, but still in good shape. The domed roof is the only thing indicating its purpose to the outside.  
  
Inside, though, Karkat's refusal to look at anything crumbles.  
  
The hallways are painted with fanciful renderings of constellations and the floors are polished to a shine, engraved with abstract patterns. The few lamps on the walls cast a purplish light on everything.  
  
The main chamber of the observatory is pitch-black when they enter, but Rose turns a small dial and dim lights along the floor turn on. The middle of the circular room is occupied by a pedestal, atop of which is a large egg-shaped metallic container, closer in size to a watermelon, and dotted with tiny holes.  
  
“This is the observatory,” Rose explains. “It's old and worn, but I assure you, this tiny building is more than a little important. Do you know what an observatory is?”  
  
“It's a place for looking at stars,” Karkat replies. His tone is deadpan enough that Rose thinks she hears a slight rebuff for assuming that he wouldn't.  
  
“Yes, stars. That is  _part_  of what we observe here. Look at the ceiling.”  
  
Karkat cranes his head back and looks. The ceiling, surprisingly enough, shows a map. He can recognize the shape of Derse and Prospit, tucked up against each other, and then Alternia, bordering them both on the western side. Alternia looks larger than Derse and Prospit put together, and Rose can see a fleeting moment of pride on Karkat's face.  
  
“You might be wondering at this point why there is a map on the ceiling.”  
  
Karkat nods very slightly, still staring upwards.  
  
“Well, generally we don't. I requested that it be projected so I may have a visual aid when I give you this explanation today,” Rose says, also looking up. “Do you see the Alternian Empire there? Quite a sprawl. The Condesce does love to keep things interesting for her neighbors, doesn't she?”  
  
Karkat's lips press together, but there is no other outward reaction to this statement.  
  
“So it's quite curious, isn't it, that she would stop so abruptly at the border of Prospit and Derse,” Rose continued. At least when she was lecturing she felt at ease talking to Karkat. “Our kingdoms are quite small and our armies negligible in the face of the supposedly unstoppable Alternian war machine. So why did she not conquer us?”  
  
“Maybe she just hasn't conquered you  _yet_ ,” Karkat says.  
  
Rose grins.  
  
“Maybe! But then the question remains the same. Why not?”  
  
“Because the Dreamers of Derse and Prospit would destroy themselves and everyone around them if they—if you—were attacked,” Karkat says, this time looking at Rose. Or at some point past her shoulder, but in her general direction, at least. That is a vast improvement over the floor, and Rose accepts it.  
  
“Well, almost. It's not that we'd choose to do so,” Rose says. “It's that it would happen in spite of us. We are inextricably tied to our kingdoms. We are, in a way, the heart in the kingdom's body. Through us passes all of the... for the lack of a better word, let's say magical energy. This energy is the lifeblood of Derse, and we are what regulates its flow. We pump it through the entire kingdom. The borders are as much physical as symbolic, but in magic, there is no difference. And when the body suffers a wound--”  
  
“It bleeds?” Karkat says, starts on a cringe, visibly stops himself, then smooths his face out to hide that he was cringing in the first place. The whole thing last for a split second, but Rose watches with fascination. And maybe with a little flutter in her stomach.   
  
“That is correct,” she says. “Invading Derse would be disastrous to the invaders as much as to the Dersites. It is an effective protection against outside forces. However, there are some drawbacks. One drawback specifically, and that is where you come in.”  
  
She waves a hand at the egg-shaped metal contraption on the pedestal, and though she doesn't touch it in any way, the tiny holes flicker with light.  
  
When Karkat looks up, the ceiling shows stars.  
  
“That is how the sky looked above the brooding caverns the night you were hatched,” Rose says, looking up as well. “It's a cliché, I admit, but the stars were aligned.”  
  
“You need me because of stars?” he asks, confused and disappointed.  
  
“No, we need you because we would die without you,” Rose says bluntly.  
  
Karkat is disbelieving. He shakes his head.  
  
“The stars merely pointed to the correct time and place. Really, anybody born in that cavern that night would have been suitable. But you are the only one the Condesce allowed to come to us. And thus you are unique in the entirety of Derse.”  
  
“Why? I can't-- I can't do anything, I don't have magic, you're the sorcerers--”  
  
“Yes, but that's the problem. We are the sorcerers. There is too much magic concentrated in us, in too pure a form. We need a way to dispel it. There are some rituals, some methods that we've already employed, but these are stopgaps, and they lose their efficiency the stronger we become. What we need is a person with a-- how do I explain this? An opposite polarity? Do you know how magnets work? No, that's not a very good comparison. A complementary frequency-- like a counterpoint.” Rose clasps her hands together, pleased. “I've been drawing a blank on that word all week,” she admits with a grin.  
  
Karkat just stares, face blank and unreadable.  
  
“What do I need to do?” he asks.  
  
Rose fiddles with her sleeve.  
  
“We still have ample time, you understand,” she says as she goes on to brush imaginary dust off her sleeve and tuck her hair behind her ear. “You won't be forced into anything until you get used to the idea. We would have preferred you adjusted to life in Derse and gotten used to us all before we broached the subject, since it's such a delicate matter, but...”  
  
Karkat's shoulders start to hunch defensively. Rose realizes her babbling is doing nothing except making him more nervous.  
  
So she clasps her hands together and very calmly says, “Since you asked, it's sex.”  
  
Karkat's expression doesn't change.  
  
“Sex with us. Four. Not all at once, of course, that would be-- All of us in turn, I mean, though that's not a requirement, but we wouldn't want to overwhelm you, and also I suppose the mechanics would be much too complicated to be worth it--”  
  
Rose pauses as her own words ring in her ears.  
  
“Excuse me,” she says with a polite smile, and walks out of the room.  
  
Once she is out in the hallway, she closes the door behind her and looks around to make sure nobody can see her. Now sure that she is alone, she walks over to the nearest wall and very deliberately smacks her forehead against it.  
  
Standing there with her forehead against the wall doesn't do as much as she had hoped to allay her mortification, so she sighs, straightens her hair, and walks back inside the domed room.  
  
Karkat is still rooted on the spot, staring at her with eyes as large as dinner plates.  
  
“I'm sorry,” Rose says with a smile. “I seem to have misplaced my composure. I thought it would be out in the hallway. Where were we? Oh, yes, I believe you haven't had breakfast yet. Or is it dinner, for you? Have you been keeping a nocturnal schedule? I understand you were awake when Dirk visited last night.”  
  
She maintains this string of chatter almost all the way back to the palace. The change in subject seems to come as a relief to Karkat as well. His answers are monosyllabic, but at least they're not fraught with terror.


	5. Chapter 5

Halfway back to Karkat's room, they cross paths with Dave, coming down the stairs.  
  
“How was the field trip?” he asks, stopping to talk to them. His head turns slightly towards Karkat, but then back to Rose.   
  
“I'll write you a report,” Rose says.  
  
“Told you he'd be bored like hell in that dingy old shack,” Dave says.  
  
“Hardly,” Rose retorts.   
  
“Yeah, I'm sure he's yawning because he's winding down from all the excitement.”  
  
Karkat's jaw shuts with an audible click of fangs when Rose turns to look at him.  
  
“Or,” Rose says, raising her chin haughtily at Dave, “he's yawning because he's nocturnal and it's well past his bedtime. If his yawning concerns you that much, dear brother, you should take him to his room and make sure he gets his rest.”  
  
“You're sending me to tuck him in? Really? I'm not a nanny, Rose. I'm the wild rebellious child who makes nannies cry.”  
  
“As I recall, the only thing you did to nannies was beg them for apple juice.”  
  
“Rose, no--”  
  
“He was an exceedingly well-behaved child,” Rose says to Karkat in a stage whisper. “Especially towards our more elderly caregivers.”  
  
Dave puts his palm firmly against Rose's mouth and turns to Karkat.  
  
“Don't listen to the lying witch,” he says to the troll. “I was a terror. To this day, weak-hearted spinsters still clutch their pearls at the sound of my name. They used to call me—blergh!”  
  
Dave pulls his hand back from Rose's face as if burned and jumps back up a stair.  
  
“You licked my hand!” he says, wiping his palm against his pants with a disgusted grimace.  
  
“And you smeared my lipstick,” Rose replies, producing a handkerchief and wiping around her lips. “Let that be a lesson to you, Dave. My vengeance is swift and merciless.”  
  
Dave grumbles at the lipstick stain he inadvertently transferred to the side of his pantleg.   
  
“Alright, that's it. Karkat, come with me, I'm saving you from her evil clutches before she lures you to the dark side,” he says, and grabs Karkat's hand. “You don't want that, they make their lipstick out of the bile of their enemies and it tastes foul.”  
  
It only takes a gentle tug for the troll to follow Dave up the stairs, but he still looks back at Rose, alarmed and apologetic.  
  
“And how do you know how our lipstick tastes, hmm?” Rose's voice rings after Dave.  
  
“Don't look back, you'll turn into a pillar of salt,” Dave says to Karkat just loud enough for Rose to hear.  
  
Karkat turns his head around quickly.  
  
Dave releases Karkat's hand when they get at the top of the staircase, at which point he gives an embarrassed shrug and sticks his hands in his pockets.  
  
“So you're sleepy, huh?” Dave asks as they settle into a stroll, side by side.  
  
“She didn't bore me. I wasn't bored,” Karkat says quickly.  
  
“Nah, I was just busting her chops. Wouldn't have blamed you if you were, though.” Dave looks down at Karkat's bare feet and stop in the middle of the hallway. “Dude, did she let you go out like that?”  
  
“Y... Yes?”  
  
“You're not going to bed with dirty feet, are you?”  
  
“I'm not,” Karkat says, but uncertainly.  
  
“No, you're definitely not.”  
  
Karkat's toes curl self-consciously.  
  
“Relax, you're not in trouble,” Dave assures him, looking up at him over his shades.  
  
Karkat inhales sharply.  
  
Dave pretends he doesn't notice and continues on his walk. He also gives himself full points for smoothness, because that's just the thing you do when you don't know how to cope with someone else's bizarre cultural hang-ups and sidestep them altogether.   
  
Karkat takes a few moments to catch up. The entire walk back to his room, he keeps opening his mouth to say something but closing it again. Dave can see this out of the corner of his eye, but doesn't comment on it. If Karkat wants answers, he's going to have to show some initiative and ask for them.  
  
When they enter the room, Karkat's nostrils flare at the smell of food. There is a generously-portioned breakfast waiting on the table.  
  
“You eat, I'll draw you a bath,” Dave says just as Karkat turns to look at him with a hopeful face.  
  
Karkat wastes no time obeying these instructions.  
  
The bathroom is right through a door in the far end of the room, and looks much the same as every other bathroom in the palace, with a few minor differences.  
  
The bath tub is circular, and big enough to fit four people. Big enough for Karkat to get lost in it, Dave thinks to himself. He turns the hot water faucet as far as it will go. Karkat's hand was a lot warmer than a human's. He will probably appreciate a nice hot dip before bed. Help the poor guy unwind. He's so stressed about everything, it makes Dave tense just looking at him.  
  
There are a lot of bath salts and flagrant oils on a small end table next to the bathtub. Dave isn't much for these kinds of things, but the monster of a bathtub is going to take forever to fill, and Karkat probably wants to eat his breakfast in peace, so he sits there for a while, reading the labels.  
  
After a while, he squirts in half a bottle of some kind of oil Dave recognizes by smell as vaguely medicinal. The water turns a vague shade of green and starts bubbling. Yeah, okay, bubbles are fun. Everybody loves bubbles, Dave reasons.  
  
The bathtub is maybe half full, but he goes out to check on Karkat.  
  
The troll is dabbing a piece of bread on an empty plate, gathering up any juices that might be left. Dave is sure he has seen swarms of locusts less diligent about devouring everything in their path than Karkat.  
  
There are stacks of fluffy towels in one of the many cabinets around the room. It takes Dave a few tries to find them, but he stumbles across the right drawer eventually.  
  
Karkat turns to look at what Dave is doing. His eyes are half-lidded and he's already drooping off, tired and satiated.  
  
“Here you go,” Dave says, handing him the towels. “You can go take a bath now, and then to bed.”  
  
Karkat looks down at the towels, vaguely confused.  
  
“Also, when's the last time you combed your hair?”  
  
“Uhh...” Karkat's face scrunches up in deep thought. A bit too much time passes without an answer.  
  
“That shouldn't be something you have to think about this long, bro.”  
  
“'M sorry.”  
  
“Nah, just... go take your bath. And wash your hair. I bet there's a comb somewhere in this room, I'll bring it to you.”  
  
Karkat scurries off to the bathroom.  
  
Dave does find a set of combs eventually, in a wooden box next to a mirror. He arrives in the bathroom, triumphant, and stops in his tracks. He has to bite his cheek to keep from bursting out laughing.  
  
Only the top of Karkat's head is visible over the bubbles in the tub, and his terrified red and yellow eyes looking at Dave pleadingly.  
  
Dave turns off the water and bats down the bubbles.  
  
“Thirty more seconds, and that would have been the last anyone ever heard from you again, huh?” Dave says.  
  
Karkat actually  _glares_  at him. Dave feels a swell of pride at that. Nobody's made him glare before now. This definitely puts him a few points ahead of Dirk.  
  
“It's alright, I rescued you from your unspeakable fate,” Dave says, giving Karkat the most serious look he can muster under the circumstances.  
  
Karkat's eyes just narrow further. He knows Dave's making fun of him, but doesn't dare call him out on it. Dave is motivated, though. First a glare, next a snarky rebuke. Climbing the social readjustment echeladder one rung at a time.  
  
He rolls up his sleeves and shrugs off his vest and putting it aside. It's warm in the bathroom, and there's a lot of steam in the air. Dave actually has to take off his shades, not so much because they're fogging up as because he always feels weird wearing them during a bath. Even if he's not the one taking the bath, apparently.  
  
“Well, I found the combs. Let's see what we can do with... that,” he says, gesturing vaguely at Karkat's hair.  
  
Dave chooses the comb with the widest apart teeth. He makes Karkat lean against the edge of the bathtub and he kneels down. His knees are going to complain later, but at least the bath mat is sort easing some of the discomfort.  
  
Very carefully, he starts running the comb through the top of Karkat's hair. He untangles the ends first, working his way up and closer to the scalp. The horns are not as much of an impediment as he expects, but it's still a slow going job. Karkat doesn't complain when he tugs a bit too hard or scratches against his skin. This makes Dave worry a bit.  
  
He keeps combing Karkat's hair until he encounters no more resistance. Then he moves on to a comb with finer teeth. Troll hair is strange, thicker than any type of human hair and with a strange texture. It also untangles a lot easier than Dave expected, and despite what he feared, he doesn't find any lice.  
  
A lot of hair falls out of Karkat's head, though, getting caught in the teeth of the comb with every brush. Dave removes whole wads from the comb and drops them next to his knees, for lack of anything better to do with it. Hair loss is a sign of famine, Dave reminds himself, and between that and the fact that Karkat hasn't had a decent grooming in a while (or possibly ever), it's expected that so much hair would be falling out. It probably only seems a lot because of how thick it is. But it's still alarming to look at. Dave moves slowly, fearful of leaving huge bald patches on Karkat's head.  
  
After a while, hair stops falling out in such dramatic amounts. The comb glides easily through Karkat's hair.  
  
And Karkat starts purring.  
  
Or at least that's what Dave thinks is happening. It's also possible someone dropped a bag of coins down the bathtub's pipes. It's a weird sound, vaguely metallic. A bit rusty.  
  
It smooths out into a low rumble after a while. Dave keeps combing, even though it's not really necessary anymore. There's probably some sort of technique to making it look even halfway decent, but Dave has no real clue about that. Dirk would probably know; he once spent two hours fussing with his hair just because the wind ruffled it a bit.  
  
“I think your hair needs a wash too,” Dave says after a while.  
  
Karkat flinches and flails, sending water splashing. The purring stops. He turns to look at Dave, blinking rapidly.  
  
He was sleeping, Dave realizes suddenly. He was  _purring in his sleep_.  
  
That just make it even  _more_  adorable.  
  
“Yeah, just lean back and dip your head in,” Dave says, pretending not to notice Karkat's confusion. “We'll give it a good scrub and then rinse it with fresh water straight from the faucet.”  
  
Karkat nods and does as Dave said, parting the bubbles and dipping his head in the water. His eyes are closed tightly and he's even holding his breath.  
  
Again, Dave tries not to laugh.  
  
*  
  
After a good scrub-down, Dave leaves Karkat to rinse himself off in privacy.  
  
He starts removing all the excess pillows from the bed, putting them away on a nearby sofa, when it occurs to him that the bed looks untouched.  
  
Looking around the room, he honestly couldn't say where else except the bed Karkat would have slept, but now concern is eating at him.  
  
Karkat emerges from the bathroom. He is bedecked in three different towels, one around his torso, one over his shoulders, and another one on his head. He looks nervous, clutching the towels like they're his last defense.  
  
“Karkat, you've slept since arriving here, right?”  
  
“I slept,” Karkat says warily.  
  
“Where?”  
  
Karkat's eyes dart to a corner of the room.  
  
“You don't mean on the floor,” Dave says flatly. “You can't possibly mean on the floor.”  
  
Karkat cringes.  
  
“You mean the floor.” Dave sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay, right, I'm only going to say this once. The floor's not for sleeping. The bed is.” He hands Karkat a nightshirt he managed to dig out from the wardrobe. “Seriously, you've got a bed the size of a small country and you're sleeping on the floor?”  
  
Karkat pulls the nightshirt over his head, letting the towels drop one by one. He lets himself be herded to the bed.  
  
“I know it's not sopor, but Rose says that shit isn't good for trolls anyway,” Dave says as he pulls the sheets over Karkat and tucks him in. “Apparently it causes the nightmares it's supposed to prevent? I don't know, man, it's fucked up.”  
  
“I don't sleep in sopor anymore,” Karkat whispers.  
  
“I know, I heard--” Dave heard Rose's explanation that slaves were not allowed sopor. “I heard you probably kicked the habit a while back. We didn't think you'd want to go back to that. I guess if you'd really want to trip balls all the way to dreamland, we could... I mean, do you want sopor?”  
  
Karkat shakes his head, already falling asleep.  
  
“I'm used to the nightmares,” he mutters low.  
  
Dave wants to ruffle Karkat's hair. Instead, he goes to pull the curtains over the windows. When he leaves he very carefully closes the door so it doesn't make a sound.


	6. Chapter 6

Karkat wakes up feeling groggy and hot. The room is completely dark, but far from being bothered by this, he feels at ease. Since getting to Derse, he has spent too much of the day awake and not enough asleep.  
  
He slips out of bed and stands up. He sways on his feet, momentarily disoriented, and looks around, trying to remember what he was supposed to do. He can't recall being told to do much of anything at all, and he feels uneasy. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do, or what he's allowed, and he has the vague fear that everyone around him thinks that he does.  
  
He goes to the curtains and pushes one of them aside looking out the window. The view is of the palace gardens, if he's not missing his guess. He saw them from afar this morning, on the way to the observatory.  
  
It's already evening. Not quite night, but a little past sunset. He feels himself waking up completely.  
  
He knows he's allowed to ask for food, at least. They won't starve him if they need him. He's more inclined to believe they're fattening him up. So he pulls the cord and anxiously paces back and forth, waiting to see if it's still true, if he's still allowed food.  
  
To his surprise, this time, two servants arrive, and they already have food on a tray cart. They bustle into the room the moment he opens the door, and one of them starts setting the food on the table immediately.  
  
The other servant turns on the lamp by the door. Karkat squints at the sudden light.  
  
“Is there anything else you will require, my lord?” the servant by the lamp asks. She's the one who usually comes when he pulls the cord.   
  
He doesn't really know what to say, so he shifts from one foot to the other, uncertainly.  
  
“Should I-- am I allowed to--” He falters, feeling vaguely ridiculous. “Should I get dressed?” he asks.  
  
“If you wish,” the servant replies, face carefully blank. “Would you like me to pick something out for you?”  
  
“Please,” he says, sighing in relief.  
  
She turns to the wardrobe and he follows right on her heels.  
  
“Perhaps you might want to sit down to eat while I pick out something, my lord?” she asks pleasantly.  
  
He takes the hint and sits down, mildly embarrassed.  
  
The other servant, a younger woman he's never seen until now, is flitting around the room. She picks up the towels Karkat abandoned on the floor after his bath, makes the bed with brisk efficiency, and then goes into the bathroom.   
  
Karkat has never before seen a person approach housekeeping with the same grim determination as a general might approach a battlefield, and he's impressed. Perhaps the other slaves had similar skill sets, and maybe if he'd been assigned to the workforce, he would have learned a similar job. He would have preferred any amount of backbreaking work to being the plaything of bored highbloods.  
  
He abandons this line of thought and turns all his attention back to his food. The servants absolve themselves of their duties and depart, turning off all the lights behind them.  
  
Halfway through his meal, there is a knock on the door. His eyes dart to the clothes set out on the bed for him as he considers what he should do. The servants don't come uncalled. Which means it's one of the four Dreamers.  
  
Karkat wonders which one of them it'll be this time.   
  
There's no point delaying, Karkat decides; it would only get him in more trouble. He goes to the door in the flimsy white garment he's already wearing and, breathing in deeply to calm himself, he opens the door.  
  
“Karkat! Hi! Slept okay?”  
  
It's the first one again, the highblood from the first day. She's smiling widely at him, and she gives a tiny wave.  
  
“Yes, Roxy,” he replies, looking at the floor.  
  
“May I come in?”  
  
“Yes, Roxy.”  
  
“Would you maybe like to get changed before I come in?”  
  
Karkat lets out a breath, suddenly realizing that his hand has been clutching the fabric around his chest like a prudish adolescent faced with his first filial pail.  
  
He still nods, because yes, he'd very much like to wear something with a bit more covering, especially in the crotch area. At this point, he doesn't even care if wouldn't make a difference.  
  
Roxy closes the door for him and he runs to grab the clothes on the bed. He still goes behind the modesty screen to dress, because he's not a complete chump, but when he comes out, Roxy is not in the room waiting to ogle his disgusting body, so he feels more than a little foolish for his paranoia.  
  
He lets her in. She doesn't turn on any of the lights like the servants did. Probably using her sorcery to avoid bumping into things.  
  
“So, we were planning on getting you measured for some proper clothes,” she says, with a crooked smile. “You know, clothes that don't fit you like a tent. If that's okay with you?”  
  
“Yes, Roxy.”  
  
“No, I mean really, is it okay with you? Because the tailor's a nice guy, but he really gets up in your business with that measuring tape, if you know what I mean. He might not notice when he's accidentally fondling you, but man,  _you're_  sure going to.”  
  
Karkat tries not to show his dismay.  
  
“I'm--” He stops himself before he can ask why it really matters if some creepy stranger fondles him when that's what he's here for anyway.   
  
“Come on, Karkitty, talk to me,” Roxy wheedles. “I promise you that whatever you say will not get you in any trouble, 'kay?”  
  
Karkat sort of believes her. He won't get culled as long as they need him. But that doesn't mean he can't get punished.  
  
“These clothes are fine,” he says.  
  
Roxy gives him a doubtful look. She sits down on the divan—the same one Dirk occupied on his visit—and pats the space next to her.  
  
“Come sit down with me. I don't bite,” she says.  
  
Karkat walks over and sits down on the divan. Not too close, but not so far that she'd see it as an insult. Roxy doesn't comment on this. She folds her hands in her lap and turns towards Karkat, still smiling.  
  
“So Rose took you to the observatory this morning, huh?” she asks.  
  
Karkat nods, looking down at her folded hands. They're weird human hands, thin skin and useless nails. But she took his collar off with those hands. She can twist the laws of nature as easily as Karkat can twist a piece of twine between his fingers.  
  
He is so distracted, he misses her next question. He looks up at her, startled, and realizes he wasn't paying attention. He can feel cold sweat prickle the back of his neck.  
  
“You zoned out a bit there, huh?” she asks, giving a short chuckle. “Calm down, buddy, it's alright. You must still be sleepy. I asked if you gave any thought to what Rose told you.”  
  
Karkat nods. He did, somewhat. But if she wants to know his opinion, he doesn't have one. He has nowhere to go, no other recourse, and no say in the matter. There's no room for opinion.  
  
“Sooooo... do you think you're up to it?” she says, the smile slipping off her face.  
  
“What choice do I have but to be 'up for it'?” he grits out.  
  
“Well, I mean... uh. There's other options and stuff?”  
  
“She... said the other options aren't as effective as-- she said they were stopgaps.”  
  
“Yeah, they are, but we're smart folk, we can figure some other stuff out,” she shrugs.  
  
Perhaps that was meant to be reassuring, but Karkat knows what backed against a wall looks like. She doesn't really believe she has any other choice. Blind, pointless optimism.  
  
But then, this just makes sense, Karkat thinks. They wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole if they weren't forced into it by circumstances. They were probably expecting someone charming or handsome or at least tolerable, but were stuck with the most repulsive troll reject to have ever outrun the culling fork, and now they have to make do. They're probably even more reluctant than he is about this arrangement.  
  
“It's fine,” he says. “I understand.”  
  
Roxy sighs.  
  
“No, you really don't,” she says. “This is all horribly unfair and absolutely not how it was supposed to work. You were supposed to have a _choice_.”  
  
Karkat shakes his head.  
  
“I don't get to have a choice. I'm supposed to be dead by now. I was never supposed to survive the trials and leave the brooding cavern. Do whatever you want.”  
  
“Oh, Karkat...”  
  
She moves then, opens her arms wide and throws them around Karkat. He stiffens, not understanding what is happening until she settles him into her arms.  
  
She's hugging him now. What the hell.  
  
“I'm sorry,” she says into his hair. “I was supposed to ask before touching. Sorry. But you needed this hug, okay? You really, really needed it. Because you're precious and sad and it just kills me to look at you. We are going to spoil you so much, kitten. I'm talking hardcore pampering here. All the food you want. And you'll never be cold or in pain ever again-- and-- and you won't ever be uncomfortable either, okay? You'll-- you'll never...” She sniffs. “Guh, this is embarrassing. I'm having a breakdown all over you.”  
  
Karkat sits frozen in place, listening to this speech. Her voice turned wobbly halfway through and he's pretty sure she's crying now. He pats her back, slowly, cautiously.  
  
“You don't... need to do any of that. I'm already here, I'll do what you say anyway, you don't need to do any of those things,” he mumbles. He doesn't know what to do, what to say. He just wants her to stop crying. God, this is horrible. Highbloods don't cry. Especially not because of him. What did he _do_? How does he make her stop?  
  
“Noooo, Karkat, no,” she whines, leaning back so she can look at his face. There aren't tears streaming down her face yet, but they're certainly glistening in her eyes. “That's the point! We  _want_  to do all that stuff for you. We want you to be happy, and that's really hard to do when you're terrified of us all the time. We just don't want you to be scared, okay? We'd never hurt you and we'll never let anyone else hurt you. You're safe.”  
  
Karkat continues patting her back gently. He can't possibly fathom why she'd want him not to be scared anymore. The highbloods in Alternia never denied him that, at least, for all that they were cruel and enjoyed toying with him. But here he's asked to hide it, as if he doesn't know that they're dangerous and he's at their mercy.  
  
It confuses him deeper than anything he encountered until now, until he doesn't know what to feel. All he is sure of at this point is that he doesn't want to see Roxy crying.  
  
He sighs. “I'm sorry, Roxy.”  
  
“No, it's fine,” she replies, squeezing him a bit tighter for a moment. “I know it's not your fault.” She sounds miserable and Karkat just wishes that she wouldn't.  
  
“I'll try not to be scared,” he grits out.  
  
Roxy perks up immediately.  
  
“Really?” she asks, voice shaky and full of hope.  
  
Karkat looks at her face. Bright off-spectrum pink eyes look back. He can do this. He can hide it. It's not as hard as he'd thought.  
  
“Yes,” he says. He's surprised by how firm his voice is. “I'll try not to be such a degenerate coward all the time.”  
  
Roxy smiles again. She has a good smile, wide and infectious. Suits her better than crying, at least.  
  
“Thank you!” she says, hugging him once again. “You don't know how much this means to me.”  
  
Carefully, hesitantly, Karkat hugs back.   
  
His head is spinning and he's not quite sure what just happened.  
  
*  
  
Once she leaves Karkat's room, Roxy takes a moment to check her reflection in a window pane. She inspects her make-up to make sure it isn't smudged and sniffles one more time, breathing out to calm herself down completely.  
  
She is so distracted that she doesn't even notice Rose coming down the hall towards her.  
  
“Roxy, what did you do?” Rose asks, and Roxy nearly jumps out of her skin.   
  
“Nothing! Why do you think I did anything?” Roxy replies. “Why you gotta be like that, Rosey?”  
  
Rose narrows her eyes.  
  
“Roxy,” she repeats, “ _what did you do?_ ”  
  
“Nothing,” Roxy insists. “We just talked.”  
  
Rose doesn't look like she believes her.  
  
"Very well, then," she says. "Now you will talk to the rest of us."


	7. Chapter 7

When Dave strolls into the council room, he's met with frosty silence.  
  
He sits down.  
  
Everybody's still quiet. Rose has her arms crossed. Roxy looks ready to burst into tears. Dirk looks like he accidentally swallowed a bug and he's trying to pretend he didn't.  _Bug? What bug? No clue what you're talking about, man._  
  
“Sup,” Dave says.  
  
Everybody's still quiet.  
  
“Okay,” he tries again, “just tell me this isn't about Karkat.”  
  
“It's not. It's about Roxy,” Rose says.  
  
“I'm sure it's not that bad,” Dave says.  
  
“No that ba-- Dave, you don't even know what she did!” Rose turns towards him, outraged.  
  
“Come on, Roxy's not stupid, I'm sure she wouldn't have done anything serious.” Dave shrugs.   
  
Dirk shakes his head slightly— _wrong thing to say, bro._  
  
“She went completely off-script,” Rose says. “And even if what she demanded of Karkat hadn't been unreasonable, then the way she did it was manipulative and unconscionable.”  
  
“Right,” he says. “Not to interrupt this really vital bitching out session just as it gets going, but I think we should assess the damage before saying anything we might regret later on.”  
  
Rose rises to her feet.  
  
“I'll go to him,” she says.  
  
“No, you won't.” Dirk gestures for Rose to sit down. “I don't think seeing you pissed off is going to do much to improve this situation.”  
  
“Then Dave should go,” Roxy suggests. She's looking down at the table, fidgeting, avoiding Rose's gaze, but her voice is high and clear.  
  
Dave blinks behind his shades, surprised. “Why me?”  
  
“You had the best rapport with him,” Rose says, reluctant to agree with Roxy. “Relatively speaking, he was most comfortable with you.”  
  
“Look, if you need someone to antagonize him, I'm your guy. But I don't think I'm qualified for 'assessing damage' or whatever bullshit you want me to do. Why can't Dirk go?”  
  
“The puppetmaster doesn't like getting down and dirty with the puppet,” Rose says dryly.  
  
“Seriously, dude?” Dave looks at Dirk. “Isn't getting down and dirty the whole point of this exercise?”  
  
Everybody around the room is various shades of unamused.  
  
“Too soon?” Dave deadpans.  
  
“Antagonizing him will not be necessary,” Rose says, returning to the subject at hand. “But a sincere emotional reaction, whatever that might be, would be preferable.”  
  
“Do I get a battleplan?” Dave asks.  
  
“Nope. Sorry, bro. Improvisation only,” Dirk replies.  
  
“Great. You're abandoning me to the ravening horde of tortured troll emotions. I hope you're all proud of yourselves. You just might have signed my death warrant.”  
  
*  
  
But for all his complaining, Dave still goes.  
  
“Hey, Karkat, you in there?” he asks through the door.  
  
There's a long silence. Probably because he's in the middle of a freakout session. Karkat always seems to be in the middle of a freakout session.  
  
“Come in,” Karkat's muffled voice sounds through the door.  
  
When Dave enters the room, Karkat is holding himself stiff and defiant and—yes, still terrified. Maybe to a greater degree than before. But this time he looks at Dave with wide eyes and clenched fists. He play-acts 'not scared' with more verve than skill.  
  
“Hey, Karkat. How's tricks?” Dave asks.  
  
Karkat's face screws up in confusion, making his facade (such as it is) crumble a bit.  
  
“I don't know?” he says, befuddled. “What tricks? What are you talking about?”  
  
“Just a figure of speech, dude, calm your tits.”  
  
“I'm calm!” Karkat says. He defaults to defensive.  
  
Dave snorts. “Yeah, if this is calm, I'm surprised your head hasn't exploded into confetti yet.”  
  
“I'm calm,” he repeats, gnashing his teeth.  
  
“Man, you're a mess.”  
  
“I'm not!”  
  
“Yeah, you kinda are.”  
  
“Fuck you, turdmaggot, I said I'm calm!” Karkat growls, baring his fangs at Dave.  
  
There is a long moment when Dave just looks at Karkat's face as it goes through the stages of realizing what he's just said, freaking out about it, and finally resigning himself to the thought that he will be whipped with his own intestines, or whatever batshit punishment he would have endured in Alternia for such an outburst.   
  
He abandons the pretense and slinks off with a muttered 'fuck', going to hide behind a cabinet.  
  
Well.   
  
Dave can't let the guy beat himself up over this. He goes after Karkat, who is curled up, knees drawn to his chest, forehead on his knees. Dave sits down in front of him, leaning against the wall and stretching his legs out.  
  
“Yeah, dude, my bad, it turns out you were calm after all,” he says.  
  
“Is Roxy in trouble?” Karkat asks, voice so muffled that Dave has to strain to hear it.  
  
“No. Why would she be in trouble?”  
  
Karkat raises his head to look at Dave. He looks so tired and hopeless.  
  
“Rose was angry with her,” he says. “She was angry with her because of me. I heard them through the door.”  
  
“Oh, that.” Dave shrugs. “They'll hash it out, no worries. Roxy just shouldn't have been so pushy with you.”  
  
“She wasn't pushy.” Karkat frowns. “She wasn't pushy at all.”  
  
“Yeah, she was. You just can't recognize it because you don't know Roxy as well as we do. Trust me, it ain't the first time she's turned on the waterworks to get what she wants.”  
  
“She was faking it?” Karkat sounds scandalized.  
  
“No, that's the worst part,” Dave says, shaking his head. “She was completely sincere. That's why it works so well for her.”  
  
Karkat sits silent and stares at Dave for a long time, like he's trying to divine his thoughts. Dave sits there, waiting, and maybe wondering a little if Karkat was one of those trolls with freaky mind powers.  
  
“I don't get any of you people,” Karkat admits after a while.   
  
“Okay, well, you could start from scratch,” Dave says. “We're not trolls and we're not your former owners. Stop assuming we'll act like we are.”  
  
“But I don't--” Karkat makes a frustrated sound, and starts again in a lower voice. “But I don't know what you want.”  
  
“Karkat, let me spell it out for you.” Dave takes off his shades, puts them aside, and takes Karkat's hand. He allows it, but with a look on his face that indicates he won't hesitate to bite if Dave tries anything untoward with it. “What we want,” Dave says solemnly, “is to woo the fuck outta you.”  
  
“Uh...”  
  
“We want to romance the pants off you, mostly metaphorically, but with a definite preference for literally at some point down the line. We're talking hardcore courtship here, the stuff they keep in the back room for the connoisseurs because the regular folk just can't handle its sheer magnitude.”  
  
A pretty red blush starts at the tips of Karkat's ears and slowly moves its way across his cheeks.  
  
“We want to blow your mind with our mad dating skills so hard that you have to pick up loose brainmatter out of cracks in the floor and wear a hat for the rest of your days to hide the unsightly hole--”  
  
“Ew.”  
  
“Yeah, that wasn't my best one,” Dave agrees. “Gotta send it back to the workshop to get the kinks hammered out. But you get my point, right?”  
  
Karkat shakes his head, his expression dripping with disbelief.  
  
“Why do you even want to pretend like any of us have a choice in the matter?” he asks.  
  
“That's some backwards-ass thinking, bro,” Dave says. “I don't know about you, but we made our choice. We had a meeting and everything. Now it's your choice if you want to let yourself get seduced. Though I should warn you, at least one fourth of us is completely irresistible and you might not be able to contain yourself.”  
  
“I wonder who that might be,” Karkat snorts, giving Dave a faint smile.  
  
“Oh, don't worry, it's pretty obvious,” Dave says, and wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.  
  
Karkat actually laughs at that. It's a short chortle, like bubbled-up hysteria, but it leaves Dave feeling extremely pleased with himself.  
  
“So hey, you must be pretty bored, holed up in this room all day,” Dave says.  
  
“With all the people dropping in on me, when would I even find the time?” Karkat retorts. As sass goes, Dave has heard better, but Karkat strikes him as the type who has a lot more where that came from.  
  
“You want we should stop bothering you so much?” Dave asks.  
  
Karkat actually looks like he's considering. He stares off into space, his expression soft and thoughtful. Dave can feel his stomach flip in disappointment already—Karkat probably wants to be left alone and then he won't get the opportunity to visit until everybody else has gotten a turn and that might be a while and he doesn't know why he's so upset by this possibility—but the troll shakes his head.  
  
“It's okay, I think I get what you're doing, however ineptly,” he says. “You're trying to fit yourselves in my quadrants.”  
  
“Um, what?”  
  
“Yeah, I see it now. You're angling for black. Roxy was definitely going for pale, and Rose is trying to pull her into ashen with me. I guess that leaves Dirk for red.”  
  
“You do realize humans don't have quadrants, right?”  
  
Karkat looks skeptical.  
  
“How can you not have quadrants?” he asks. “You just said you wanted to romance me. Unless I missed something, that implies you want me in your quadrants.”  
  
“Yeah, but-- that's not-- wait, aren't two of those no-kissing quadrants?”  
  
“I don't know how your species conducts its conciliatory romance,” Karkat starts.  
  
“We conduct it by not having it at all,” Dave says. “It's stupid. Stopping people from killing each other isn't a romance, it's a fucking public service.”  
  
Karkat gives Dave that scandalized look again.  
  
“You're all positively depraved,” he whispers, shocked.  
  
“Yeah, sure, why not.”  
  
After that, they both lapse into silence, uncertain and unsure what to expect for the future. They start talking again after a while, small things about quadrants and food and palace gossip. Dave offers to give Karkat a tour.   
  
At the end, when Dave is just about to leave, Karkat stops him by the door.  
  
“I don't mind the visits,” he says, eyes to the ground. But this time, he doesn't look scared, just shy.


	8. Chapter 8

The next few days pass smoothly enough.  
  
Karkat is finally given a short tour of the palace, and with this, encouraged to leave his room of his own volition. Each of the Dreamers shows him their personal chambers, and Karkat is visibly uncomfortable and jumpy every single time, as if expecting to be ravished on the spot. After that, they choose different places. Rose takes him to the libraries and Roxy to the gardens and Dirk to his workshop and Dave to the roof. Karkat finally makes his first hesitant forays outside his room, and finds the kitchens all on his own.  
  
The servants are quite taken with him, curtsying and bowing and offering their services. They giggle at his indecision, putting it down as shyness, and they blithely ignore his fumbles, chalking it up to troll oddities. Karkat doesn't know how to deal with them, but they know how to deal with him, and things work out.  
  
Eventually, the tailor comes and takes his measurements as promised, and he has something ready for fitting the next evening. Dirk accompanies Karkat on this errand, sitting in a corner of the tailor's workroom while Karkat tries on clothes.  
  
When faced with a mirror, Karkat spends a long time staring, looking increasingly sickened by his reflection. The tailor is dismayed—doubtless he has never seen any of his clients react so violently to the sight of a vest and a pair of trousers—but Dirk comes up next to Karkat and puts a hand against his back, propping him up, because he looks ready to faint.  
  
“What's wrong?” Dirk asks, lowering his head to Karkat's and speaking softly in his ear.  
  
“It's just... so  _red_ ,” Karkat says.  
  
It's bright red like his eyes. Dirk has never met a troll who didn't enjoy wearing their color, no matter how low, and probably the tailor hasn't either. But his color isn't even low, it's technically nonexistent. The lowest rustblood can still be thankful for belonging, but Karkat has no such luxury.  
  
“Black is always a classic,” Dirk suggests. “I bet it would suit you.”  
  
“Yeah, if you say so,” Karkat says, swallowing nervously. Dirk can feel some of the tension drain from his back. “And gray is a good color too.”  
  
“Gray's a great color,” Dirk says. “Fantastic choice.”  
  
“And would the gentletroll like his symbol, as well?” the tailor asks.  
  
Karkat inhales suddenly.  
  
“I had a symbol,” he says quietly. “It was taken away when they... when they caught me.”  
  
Dirk is about to strangle the tailor just a little for bringing it up, but Karkat nods, a faraway look on his face.  
  
“Yeah, I'd like my symbol.”  
  
He draws it in tailor's chalk on a scrap of black fabric, two circles with trailing lines, mirroring each other. Then he looks at the tailor, suddenly unsure and afraid again and so small. The tailor only nods and picks up the scrap of fabric carefully.  
  
“You shall have it, then,” the old man says.  
  
Karkat is so thankful it makes Dirk hurt just looking at him. But he's also oddly serene for the rest of the night.  
  
They settle into a routine of sorts. A frustratingly chaste routine, in Dirk's opinion, but at least Karkat seems to be adjusting relatively well. He's still withdrawn and hesitant, and sometimes he covers it up with unnecessary bluster. He talks now, though. He actually answers questions with full sentences, and has even gone so far as to express an opinion once or twice.   
  
But at the same time, he's gotten into the habit of denying when something upsets or scares him. Dirk can't really blame this on anything Roxy said to him, because it's perfectly possible Karkat would have done this regardless. But at the same time, he can't say she's completely without fault, because her actions might have clogged up the lines of communication unnecessarily.  
  
At any rate, Roxy blames herself. She's always relentlessly cheerful when she goes to see Karkat, and Dirk knows her well enough to tell when she's covering for a mistake. She never apologized, and Rose let the matter drop after that night, but there's a weird lingering tension between them, even though they're trying to act like nothing happened.  
  
Dirk is willing to wait it out and see if this whole thing solves itself.  
  
Actually, though, it's Karkat who solves it.


	9. Chapter 9

The Derse palace is lovely, it's wonderful, it's  _home_ , but there is always a cling of strange melancholy to everything. Sometimes Roxy can't abide cold, elegant arches and marble that sends footsteps echoing forever. Sometimes the corners are too sharp and the windows too tall and the hallways too long, and when she was younger, she'd sit in her room, by the window, and pet one of her cats for hours until she no longer felt crushingly small and vulnerable.  
  
Once she got older, even though her cats exploded in numbers, she found other avenues of comfort, most often at the bottom of a bottle. It was a way to cope with the boredom of long functions when she was finally deemed old enough to partake of the wine the courtiers indulged in freely. But after a few glasses, the walk back to her room at the break of dawn became fuzzy and indistinct and not everything was a lot less daunting.  
  
Rose does the same, to a point, but never enough to draw Dirk's disapproving little frowns. And even so, Roxy never drinks so much that it ever becomes a problem. She only does it when she needs it, and if sometimes she needs it more often than not, that is not a sign of anything worrisome.  
  
And anyway, it is well past sunset now, and there's hardly anyone around to see Roxy wander the halls with a bottle in one hand and a wine glass in the other. She knows the routine of the palace and she knows where people aren't going to be, and if she takes a detour through the portrait gallery, that doesn't necessarily mean that she's avoiding anyone, it's just that she doesn't like it when they make a fuss over a little wine. The portrait gallery isn't so bad after enough drinks. The blank gazes of former Dreamers don't weigh as heavily.  
  
She gets turned around after that and has to double back, but then she forgets where she was going in the first place. She comes across Karkat's door and decides that this must have been her destination.  
  
Knocking is awkward with both hands occupied, but she manages. She downs the last few mouthfuls of wine and poses seductively against the door frame.  
  
Karkat opens the door and looks her over, surprised.  
  
“Roxy?” He frowns in confusion.  
  
“Hey there, sailor,” Roxy says and gives him a saucy little wink.   
  
He looks even more confused at this. Poor boy, someone's really going to have to teach him how to handle a lady.  
  
Yeah, she should do that now. She saunters past him and sits herself pretty on the divan.   
  
Where did her bottle go?  
  
Oh, she handed it to Karkat when she passed by him. Well, it was empty anyway, no use getting all emotional over it. She still has the glass, at least. Even though it's empty too.  
  
“Are you okay?” he asks, approaching Roxy cautiously.  
  
“Yeah, I'm eckshel-- exete-- excellent, Kitkat,” she replies, giving him a winning smile.  
  
Karkat looks at the bottle and then back at her. “Were you supposed to drink all this?”  
  
“Ugh, so many questions,” Roxy says and sighs deeply. “Jus' come over here pleashe... please.”  
  
He places the bottle on the floor and sits down, but he's terribly nervous, in a cute kind of way. He's cute all over, though, Roxy thinks with amusement. She scoots closer. Then she throws her arms around his neck and turns sideways, lifts her legs onto the divan so they're across his lap. She knows she's probably a hot mess and scaring him a little, but she doesn't really care at this point. She just nuzzles his shoulder. She can pretend he's holding her this way, that  _someone_ , at least, is holding her.  
  
“This state isn't permanent, is it?” he asks.  
  
Roxy giggles, the sound high-pitched and sharp even to her own ears.   
  
“Aw, honey, you haben't seen anybody drunk before?” she asks.  
  
He shakes his head. She believes him. All the trolls she's met so far have been teetotalers. Alcohol isn't really a thing in a society where lowering your guard is seen as asking for a knife in the ribs. Which just goes to show how much troll society sucks, in Roxy's opinion.  
  
“'M gonna be fine,” she promises. “Evenua-- evental-- eventually. Not right now, though...”  
  
She can feel him nod slightly. After a few more moment, he puts an arm around her waist, supporting her back. Her eyes sting a bit, but she breathes in deeply and hides her face in the crook of his neck. He smells not-human, dry and spicy at the same time, but it's nice. He's probably smelling the booze on her breath right now.  
  
She sort of wants to crawl onto his lap completely, but he might not really be able to support her weight and anyway... He probably doesn't even want her there. She can picture his eyes flicking around nervously, trying to figure out how to extricate himself and make her go away without causing offense. He won't say anything, of course; perfectly behaved little troll, and here she is, taking advantage of him because nobody else will sit still long enough for her to take advantage of them instead.  
  
There's a thud and they both flinch.  
  
She dropped the glass. It fell onto the carpet and rolled away.   
  
“Roxy, why are you sad?” Karkat asks quickly, just as Roxy is pondering whether picking up the glass was worth the effort. She's momentarily thrown by this question.  
  
“I'm not sad, who's sad? Not me!” she says, looking at him and forcing a smile. It must not be very good, because he looks doubtful.   
  
“Just tell me,” he says. “It's obvious you want to.”  
  
“Nuh-huh.”  
  
“Yuh-huh,” he retorts.  
  
Roxy pouts.  
  
“I can't help you if you won't tell me what the problem is,” Karkat says.  
  
“Whoa, hold on a minur-- minute, I never said I needed anybody's help.”  
  
“No, clearly self-administering poison and cuddle-ambushing people are the signs of a lucid and untroubled mind in humans and I was only mistaking perfectly normal conduct for stress-induced palebaiting,” Karkat mutters and Roxy stares because wow, that--  
  
That was definitely sarcasm there. Huh.  
  
Now he just looks embarrassed. Roxy is silent for a very long time, trying to figure out how to respond.  
  
“Oh god,” he says as the silence drags on, “I  _was_  mistaken. I'm reading this completely wrong--”  
  
“Noooooo, no no no, it's fine, you're right, I'm a mesh-- sorry, a mess,” Roxy says quickly, clinging to his neck a bit tighter.  
  
“Okay, uh... you're not going to cry again, are you?” Karkat asks.  
  
“Nah, you're safe, I'm way past the weepy hysterical broad threshold,” Roxy says, laughing bitterly. “Zooming past the useless lump of drunk and holding course towards remorseful hungover ball of misery. Estimated time of arrival, tomorrow morning, right when the sun's bright enough to melt my eyeblubs-- eyebulves-- eyebulbs. Dang, almost made it.”  
  
“You're not useless,” he says low.  
  
“Right, if it wasn't for me, there wouldn't be anyone hangin' onto terrified trolls like attention-seeking barnacles,” Roxy laughs. “Here'm I, stealing the job of hard-working seafood.”  
  
Karkat makes an exasperated sound in the back of his throat, something that sounds like a wet clicking, and then he pull Roxy up in his lap and wraps his arms around her.  
  
“I don't mind,” he says, in a tone that dares Roxy to contradict him.  
  
Roxy really does feel like she's ready to burst into tears right now, but she just sighs deeply and settles herself more comfortably.  
  
“Now are you going to tell me what's wrong?” he says.  
  
She is ready to reassure him that it's fine, she'll be over it by morning, he doesn't need to concern himself with it, but when she opens her mouth what she blurts out instead is, “I think Rose hates me.”  
  
There's a long moment of awkward silence.  
  
“But you're so nice to each other,” he says, like he's asking a question. He's seen them interact maybe a grand total of twice in the past week since his arrival, and then only briefly, with smiles and casual banter. Roxy can't blame him for not noticing anything amiss. Dave hasn't either. Maybe not even Dirk, as far as she knows.  
  
“She won't say anything, but I can tell,” Roxy says. “She's still angry with me.”  
  
“Is this about what you said to me that time?”  
  
Roxy remains silent.  
  
“Did you apologize?”  
  
“Oh, no, I can't apologize!” Roxy balks. “What if it's nothing? What if it'll just pass if I ignore it?”  
  
“If it was nothing, then you wouldn't be here like this,” Karkat says.  
  
“Okay, but like, what if everything's just in my head and she isn't even mad at me, and if I bring it up, she'll remember that she does have a reason to be mad at me, and then she'll really be angry?”  
  
“Roxy...” He tilts her head up so their eyes meet and with a deeply solemn expression says, “That is the most pan-witheringly stupid load of festering backwards bullshit logic I've ever heard spew from a sentient being's mouth. And I used to witness Alternian street theater on a regular basis, so you're going up against professionals in this category.”  
  
Roxy takes a few moments to process that statement, and when she finally does, she bursts out laughing. Karkat relaxes a bit, even smiles tightly.  
  
“If she's not angry with you, then she's not, and apologizing won't hurt,” he continues, as Roxy's guffaws subside. “Just tell her you're sorry. You don't even have to specify what for, I'm sure if she has any reason to be upset, she'll assume that's what you're apologizing for.”  
  
“Either you're really smart or I'm really drunk,” Roxy says, “but I'm not as drunk as I could be, so you're probably just a really brainy dude.”  
  
“Hardly,” Karkat snorts. “I was just stating the obvious because you're too addled by intoxicants to figure it out yourself.”  
  
“Whatever, take the compliment, Karkitten,” Roxy replies, snuggling up against him.  
  
The silence that follows is comfortable. If she were a cat, Roxy thinks she'd be purring right about now. He's warm and solid and he's running his fingers through her hair (just a bit through the ends, but still), and she can't really recall ever being allowed so far into someone else's space until now. It's new. It's intimate.  
  
“S'nice,” she mumbles drowsily.  
  
“Yeah...” Karkat says, voice hushed. “I've never jammed with anyone before.”  
  
“Ooooh, that's like a date activity for the pale quadrant, isn't it?” she asks.  
  
“Yeah, it's... Yes.”  
  
She flutters her eyelashes rapidly, tickling his throat.  
  
“Have you ever been kissed before?” she asks, feeling a smile spread on her face. His breath hitches, startled.  
  
“No,” he says.  
  
“D'you wanna be kissed?”  
  
“...Yes.”  
  
Roxy looks at him, still smiling—he's blushing and looking back at her with a mix of nervousness and anticipation. She leans in and plants a sloppy wet kiss right on his cheek.  
  
He looks almost disappointed, the poor precious soul. Still blushing, though. This up close, Roxy can see the dusting of red across his cheeks perfectly.  
  
“Oh, I thought you were--” He winces. “Never mind. Um. Thanks, that was... very nice.”  
  
“Well, dang, 'very nice',” Roxy repeats, trying to stop from grinning so she can feign looking hurt. “You just damned me with faint praise there. I'm crushed. Here, lemme try for a better review.”  
  
She cups his face and turns his head towards her, and then her mouth is against his. Softly at first, just a faint fluttering touch of lips, but then more confident, languorous kisses. He's perfectly still at the beginning, and Roxy can feel him giving her all of his attention, but then he starts mimicking her motions, moving his lips against hers.   
  
His hold on her tightens a bit and he even nips at her lips first. Roxy chuckles and nips back, and then deepens the kiss. They test each other out, shy and careful, and learn from each other as they go along. He tastes so good, Roxy can't describe it, just sweet-and-sour, and he's warm and alive and his skin feels velvety and--  
  
They break off, both of them breathing heavily. He has a far-away look in his eyes and an expression of slack amazement.  
  
“Best reviews,” he says between panting breaths, “absolutely, you're-- that was--”  
  
“Yeah,” Roxy says, her breathing just as labored. “We should definitely do that again sometime.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Then he pulls her in again and picks up where they left off.


	10. Chapter 10

Rose is only peripherally aware of Roxy when she walks into the council room and sits down in the next chair over. Most of her attention is taken up by the book in front of her, and the annotated calendar upon its pages.  
  
“Rose. Hey, Rosey.”  
  
Rose lifts her head and levels an infinitely patient look at Roxy. Roxy is smiling.  
  
“You know what we haven't done in a while?” she says. “We haven't been at the lake to feed the baby kraken. We used to love doing that, remember? It always freaked out the boys.”  
  
“I remember,” Rose replies, a bit puzzled. “Any particular reason you wish to rehash childhood memories?”  
  
“We just don't spend enough time together,” Roxy says, shaking her head.   
  
“We're a lot busier than we used to be back then,” Rose says. In the past years, as their obligations multiplied in number and scope, their free time dwindled. They could still wrangle a few hours for themselves if they planned it out well or if nothing of note was going on, but for the past week, free time meant time spent with Karkat more than anything.  
  
“Nah, but we could have done it anyway if we really wanted to. Dirk and Dave still spar on the roof, y'know.”  
  
“Yes, I suppose so,” Rose says. “We'll... We could take Karkat along, show him the palace grounds.”  
  
“Yeah!” Roxy brightens. “We should defs do that.”  
  
Unexpectedly, she leans forward and gives Rose a tight hug. Rose stiffens in surprise for a moment, but hugs her sister in return. She doesn't completely understand what's going on yet, and it is vexing her.  
  
“I'm sorry, Rose,” Roxy says softly.  
  
“Whatever for?”  
  
“Everything. All the things,” she replies, and chuckles bitterly. “We never apologize for anything in this family. I just realized that last night. And you know, I sorta expect that from emotionally repressed weirdos like the Striders, but we should really know better.”  
  
“Oh. Well.” Rose blinks, because she really has no other response to this.  
  
“Also,” Roxy continues, releasing Rose from the hug, “my apology applies retroactively to things you don't know about yet, so keep that in mind for what I'm going to tell you next.”  
  
“Alright?”  
  
Roxy breathes in deeply. “I made out with Karkat last night.”  
  
Rose sits there in silence for a long time, just looking at Roxy. Roxy looks back at Rose, worried and waiting.  
  
“You made out with Karkat,” Rose says slowly, her expression unchanged.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Last night.”  
  
“Uh huh.”  
  
“On the mouth.”  
  
“I hear that's how it's done, yeah.”  
  
Rose pinches the bridge of her nose.  
  
“Why?” she asks.  
  
“Cause he's hot?”  
  
“Roxy.”  
  
“It just sort of happened!” Roxy says. “But nothing below the neckline, I promise! Well, okay, he might have touched my boob at one point, but I think that was by mistake.”  
  
“ _Roxy._ ”  
  
“Rose. Calm down. He's fine. And he likes makeouts.”  
  
“Your actions don't strike you as a bit hasty?” Rose asks, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“No, not really.” Roxy shrugs. “Maybe you just had to be there, but he isn't the fragile little blossom you think he is, Rose.”  
  
“Trolls are no more psychologically resilient than humans are,” Rose says. “Beliefs to the contrary are based on myth and poor understanding of Alternian society.”  
  
“And I never said he wasn't affected by the sucky life he had up until this point,” Roxy replies. “But that has nothing to do with his ability to--”  
  
“To?”  
  
“Make out,” Roxy says, shrugging again. “He's... I don't know, normal, I guess. And lonely. And perfectly capable of making his own decisions about who to kiss.”  
  
“And you're sure it was  _his_  decision?” Rose asks frostily.  
  
“Rose. I want to look me in the eye and tell me if I'd have done it otherwise.”  
  
They lock gazes for a few seconds. Roxy is not backing down, not looking away. There is a self-assurance in her eyes that makes Rose falter, and for once, she is the first to look away. She slumps back into her seat. Roxy relaxes as well, but still regards Rose with wariness.  
  
“There's nothing we can do about it now, I suppose,” Rose concedes. “We'll have to... improvise from this point on.”  
  
Roxy grins from ear to ear and leaps from her chair to give Rose another hug. Rose has no choice but to accept it, and pats Roxy's back with one hand, waiting for this surge of affection on her part to end. It's just at that moment that Dirk walks in.  
  
“Someone's feeling huggy today,” he says, pulling a chair and seating himself next to Roxy.  
  
“Yo, Dirk, guess who got sloppy makeouts last night,” Roxy says. She holds out her hand, and Dirk high-fives her.  
  
“You're not even going to ask who the other participant was?” Rose says to Dirk.  
  
He looks from Rose to Roxy, and then his eyebrows rise far over his shades.  
  
“Not Karkat,” he says.  
  
“Yes, Karkat,” Roxy confirms smugly.  
  
“How was it?” he asks.  
  
“Pretty awesome.”  
  
Rose rolls her eyes.  
  
Dave arrives next, and Roxy gives him the news as well.  
  
“Way to go, Rox,” he says, giving her a thumbs up.   
  
“It was with Karkat,” Rose adds.  
  
“I'm sure she made us proud,” Dave says, taking his seat.  
  
Rose makes an exasperated face while Roxy snickers a little. Dirk is perfectly impassive. It takes Dave a few seconds to realize that they aren't joking.  
  
“Whoa-- wait. When you say with Karkat, you mean actually with Karkat?” he says, sounding about as incredulous as he's willing to allow himself.  
  
“Well, duh,” Roxy says.  
  
“The rest of us got some catching up to do,” Dirk drawls.  
  
“This isn't a race,” Dave says, face pinched in disapproval. Dirk is having none of it, though. He smirks.  
  
“That's fourth place kinda talk, Dave.”  
  
“That's creepy molester kinda talk, Dirk.”  
  
“Not if he begs for it.”  
  
“I'd like to see you swing that.”  
  
“Bet you would. Maybe you'd learn a thing or two.”  
  
Roxy leans towards Rose. “Do you get the feeling they're about to tear each other's clothes off any moment now, or is it just me?”   
  
She whispers just loud enough for both Striders to fall silent and glare at her in annoyance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To quote an anon's comment on the kink meme, "Just like that the Seduction of Karkat Vantas goes from Co-Op to PvP".


	11. Chapter 11

Karkat spends so much time bracing himself for a change, that when things proceed as they have up until that point, he feels sort of cheated.  
  
But no, the string of visits and short outings continues. There are no demands made of him, as he would expect once it got out that Roxy got a little more than the others, and there is no direct mention of anything untoward, least of all from Roxy. Over the next three days or so, they only manage to squeeze in one impromptu makeout session, in an out of the way cranny outside his room, but other than the fact that she gives his ass a firm grab, nothing else happens.  
  
It's a bit disconcerting. He wonders if maybe Roxy is keeping it a secret from the others, but then, they  _have_  made some oblique comments that don't make sense unless they know.  
  
At first Karkat spends an unreasonable amount of time obsessing over this question, mostly because he isn't sure if he's relieved or disappointed. If any of them tried anything, at least it would help clear up his feelings on the matter, but they don't, and his frustration grows with every innocent little visit where they act all polite and respectful.  
  
So he still goes on with his life, because he can't just sit around all day and fret (though that's inaccurate—he  _can_  sit around all day and fret, but he still has a shred of dignity somewhere in his stunted disgrace of a body, so he won't) and tries to put the worries out of his mind until there's something concrete to worry about.  
  
He's busy hiding a pork chop in the back of a wardrobe drawer when he's interrupted by a knock on the door. It's loud and forceful enough to make him flinch and look around guiltily, but then he shuts the drawer and wipes his hands clean on his pants and goes to answer the door.  
  
He doesn't recognize the man at the door. He's a servant, judging by his clothes, but Karkat is sure he's never seen him before.  
  
“You've been summoned,” the dour man informs him. Then he turns on his heel and walks away.  
  
Since he didn't bother to mention where or by who, Karkat has no choice but to scurry off after him. They go down the stairs and out the back in complete silence, and the servant doesn't stop or look back until they're outside. It's barely twilight, the sun still bright enough to hurt his eyes, but Karkat follows along squinting.  
  
The servant points Karkat towards Dirk's workshop and then leaves just as wordlessly.  
  
Karkat is at a loss for what to do. He's been shown around Dirk's workshop once, and he was told not to touch anything and to never go poking around alone. When he peers inside the workshop—one of the double doors is cracked open—he doesn't see any movement inside.  
  
Looking around, there's nobody who might tell him what he's supposed to do, so Karkat pulls the door open a little wider and goes in. It's darker inside, and his eyes stop hurting.  
  
He takes a few tentative steps inside. There are tables along the walls, laden with all sorts of mechanical bits that Karkat doesn't understand, and so he keeps to the center of the room. He can't see Dirk, but he can hear rattling from the next room, like someone is rummaging through boxes.  
  
He'll just wait here, then?  
  
Why did Dirk even call him? Looking around, there are signs that Dirk is in the middle of working on something. There's an open toolbox on the floor and strange parts arranged carefully on a table.  
  
Sitting on a stool, propped against the wall, there is a metal figure, chest cavity open.  
  
Karkat is almost startled to notice it. He's seen things like these before, robots and automatons and constructs, but never this up close, and never what their innards look like. He casts a wary look at the door leading to the next room, but he only sees shelves full of boxes and no Dirk in sight, so he takes a few steps closer to the robot.  
  
He still keeps his distance, careful not to disturb anything, but he is fascinated by what he sees.  
  
The inside of the robot's chest is a mess of gears and cables and strange glowing things. There's an order to the chaos, but it's all so complicated, that Karkat can't understand what any of that stuff does. It's also beautiful in a way. There are things emitting light inside, and casting strange shadows through the teeth of the gears, and there's brightly-colored liquids moving through transparent tubes.  
  
He probably takes a step too close, because the robot's head, hanging down limply until then, rises and turns to face Karkat. Its mouth is a jagged line and its eyes are hollow rectangular holes, but Karkat can't help the feeling that he is being stared at and judged.  
  
He takes a step back and nearly jumps out of his skin when a hand falls on his shoulder.  
  
“Easy there, he's harmless,” Dirk says, amused. Karkat can't tell if he's talking about him or the robot.  
  
He whirls around regardless.  
  
“I didn't mean to, I just wanted to look--” Karkat starts babbling. Dirk cuts him off with a sharp gesture of his hand.  
  
“I know, it's fine. I told you you could look last time, didn't I?” he says.  
  
He has a piece in his hand, an oblong metal thing with glass bits and sockets that Karkat can't really understand the purpose of.  
  
“Do you mind if I work while we talk?” he asks.  
  
Karkat shakes his head. This is stupid, Dirk doesn't need his permission. Why even ask?  
  
Dirk sits down on the floor. He picks an instrument from the toolbox (it looks like a cross between a screwdriver and a firefly, and it glows yellow at his touch) and uses its tapered tip to tinker with the piece in his hand.  
  
Karkat sits down as well, keeping his limbs close. The robot's head lowers again, probably going dormant again. Karkat doesn't really understand, but he supposes it must be a good sign, like maybe it won't mistake him for a threat and crush him into a fine red dust.  
  
“Don't mind Sawtooth, he's less scary than he looks,” Dirk says without looking away from his work.  
  
Oh, so its name is Sawtooth. There's a nice friendly name, thinks Karkat.  
  
But Karkat feels himself relax slightly. Watching Dirk work is oddly soothing in that regard. He's in his element in this workshop, surrounded by things only he understands and knows how to manipulate. His shirtsleeves and rolled up, revealing the muscles along his forearms. Karkat stares at those forearms for a long time, before he catches himself and looks away.  
  
Then when he looks back, his eyes fall right on Dirk's wide shoulders and oddly attractive neck and up to his lips, and Karkat has to admit to himself that he's thinking about the thing he wasn't going to think of again.  
  
“Is this why you called me here?” Karkat asks before he can lose his nerve.  
  
Dirk pauses for a moment, tilts his head like maybe he's looking at Karkat. Hard to tell through the shades, but Karkat can feel it anyway.  
  
“Nah, I was just going to talk to you about something,” Dirk says casually, and returns his attention to his work.  
  
“Okay?” Karkat is mildly exasperated at this point. Why is Dirk making him ask? “What did you want to talk about?”  
  
“Just that Dave's birthday is coming up.”  
  
Birthday. Like a human wriggling day. Karkat is familiar with the concept.  
  
“Am I supposed to do something?” Karkat asks.  
  
“Not particularly,” Dirk says, and starts rooting through his toolbox. “Usually, you'd have to make at least an appearance on occasions like these, but since you haven't been formally introduced to the Court yet—and yeah, that's another thing that's gotta happen eventually—we figured you'd want to skip straight to the afterparty.”  
  
“Afterparty?”  
  
“There's snark and booze. Occasionally someone shows a distant echo of genuine emotion and we're all suitably embarrassed.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“It's only the four of us,” Dirk says softer. “And you, if you want to come.”  
  
Karkat feels oddly touched by the invitation. It sounds like something intimate, but they invited him along? He's never seen the four of them together until now, it would just be so...  
  
“No, it's fine, I'd like that,” Karkat says. “What do you mean by 'formally introduced to the Court'?”  
  
“Eh, the usual. You dress up nice, schmooze with some giggly nobles, let them get a good look at you, and you're in.”  
  
“I'm in what?”  
  
“In the Court. Rose probably hasn't gotten to this part yet, huh? You get an official position. Titles, a yearly stipend, some obligations that range from tedious to downright pain in the ass. Stuff like that.”  
  
Dirk gets up to root around in Sawtooth's chest case.  
  
Karkat sits on the floor, speechless for a long time. It sounds absurd that he would freely be made a... an honorary highblood, just for being someone's glorified sexual aid. The Condesce wouldn't have sent him here if she knew.  
  
He tries to think back at the days after they decided to send him to Derse. He can't recall any talk of titles or stipends. He recalls the blueblooded slavemaster poking his ribs and looking at his skinny arms with disdain ('hope the runt doesn't die before they're done'), and he recalls overhearing the Condesce prattling at a taciturn seadweller, ('he was gettin' boring anywave, at least he'll finally be good for somefin other than cullbait'). He recalls the ambassador giving him a lookover with disgust ('ugh, they  _wanted_  this thing? I hope they keep it in a cupboard. I wouldn't use it as a footstool on a floor made of daggers.').  
  
But nobody ever acted like this was an honor, nobody ever gave any indication that he  _wouldn't_  be kept in a cupboard and taken out only to be used. Nobody acted like they knew a damn thing, and Karkat thanks whatever oversight of destiny resulted in this unholy instance of unprecedented luck, because he was brought here in chains, but he isn't in chains now. And even if this reprieve is temporary, even if he'll end up scraping the bottom of fate's barrel for dregs of happiness again, he'll enjoy this period for as long as he can. He feels up to facing the world again, and he's not sure if it's because of the food and rest he's gotten as much as because he is treated like a real person again and has started feeling like one once more.  
  
He feels dizzy just considering all of this. Dirk is probably waiting for some sort of reaction, though, even if all his focus seems to be on prodding a series of tubes half-filled with glowing orange liquid.  
  
“Why do I need to be introduced?” Karkat asks, getting up. “The Court saw me already. They know who I am.”   
  
Dirk turns around.  
  
“You don't mean that horror show on the first day?” he asks, and sounds genuinely perturbed. “That wasn't an introduction, dude,” Dirk says, rounding up on Karkat, “that was a fucking travesty. If we knew what he had in mind beforehand, we'd have set the hounds on him.”  
  
“You have hounds?” Karkat asks nonsensically.  
  
“No, but I would've built some myself, and then set them on him.”  
  
Karkat actually surprises himself by laughing at that. Dirk looks like he's almost smiling.  
  
“So when does this introduction thing need to happen?” he asks Dirk.  
  
Dirk shrugs. “Sometime in the next two months. After that there's a whole slew of holidays and a whole 'nother round of official shit that needs to take place, and it's better we don't delay your little debutante ball too much.”  
  
“Okay.” Karkat nods, breathing deeply. “Two months. I can do it.”  
  
“Yeah, you can. Don't worry, it's fine. We'll all be there and make sure all the courtiers behave.”  
  
“Are they dangerous?”  
  
“Naw, nothing like. Some of the old gals can get pretty handsy when they're sauced, though, so watch your ass. Literally.”  
  
“Alright? And what about the other thing?”  
  
“The other thing?” Dirk is perfectly impassive. Karkat doesn't let this intimidate him.  
  
“You know what I mean. The reason I'm here.” Karkat feels his face burning. He breathes evenly, trying to give the appearance of calm, even if inside he's flipping out.  
  
“We still got time,” Dirk says.  
  
“That's what Rose said,” Karkat snarls. “That doesn't answer my question! How much time? Or am I just going to have to wait until you show up at my door in the middle of the day begging for my bulge because you were so busy being vague and mysterious that you didn't notice the impending crotchsplosion threatening to doom us all?”  
  
Karkat shuts his mouth abruptly—to late, of course, because knowing when it's time to shut his facegash is a skill he still hasn't mastered—but he doesn't look away or back down, because he needs to know, dammit, he can't just let them spring this on him without warning and...  
  
...And Dirk isn't doing anything, he's just standing there and staring back for what feels like a small eternity, but then he moves, he just stalks towards Karkat, all smooth predator motions and completely blank face.  
  
Karkat takes a half-step back, but it's all he has time for before Dirk reaches him, and then there's a hand on his shoulder and another on the back of his neck, tilting his head up--  
  
 _Oh._  
  
Dirk's kissing him.  
  
Karkat definitely didn't expect--  
  
It doesn't feel anything like kissing Roxy felt, is his first coherent thought. But not in a bad way, is his second. Roxy was more playful and prone to giggle at random intervals, but Dirk is just, down to business, right away, like he knows where he's going with it and doesn't want to make any stops on the way. His mouth is hot and wet and insistent, but his lips and still soft and kissable, even if the rest of his face is covered in that scratchy hair human males are prone to exhibiting. The contrast is making Karkat lightheaded.  
  
Then Karkat feels himself getting pushed backwards, not ungently, but firmly, and doesn't understand why until he feels the edge of a table against his lower back. Dirk lifts him up, doesn't even strain himself doing it, and puts Karkat's ass on the table. He doesn't stop kissing Karkat while he does it, and it's actually made easier for him after he does it because he no longer has to lean down as much to compensate for the height difference.  
  
Karkat grips Dirk's shirt hard, afraid he'll fall, but that's not really a risk with his legs clamping down around Dirk's hips and Dirk's arms around him. There are still fingers at the nape of his neck, solid and warm, but it doesn't feel like being trapped, it only feels like being held. To his eternal mortification, Karkat makes a sound that is much too needy and too close to a moan, but he can't stop, he doesn't want to, he just keeps kissing back, over and over. It feels like he can't really get enough, like every second that he's kissing Dirk makes him want to kiss Dirk more and it's a bit insufferable.  
  
Dirk breaks off the kiss eventually, and they stay in that position, both of them panting and flushed. Karkat doesn't notice how much he's been missing air, and breathes so deep it hurts.  
  
“To answer your question, I'm ready when you are,” Dirk purrs in Karkat's ear, and Karkat makes a strangled noise when he finally recalls what the question was.  
  
“Now?” Karkat asks, and can't help but look towards the workshop's door, still ajar.   
  
Anybody could walk in at any moment and-- and the thought sends an icy stab through Karkat's heated body. He can't do that. He can't-- not here, not out in the open. Not where people can  _hear_. Not where people could see him. He can't.  
  
“No,” Dirk says, brushing back Karkat's hair and planting soft kisses along his brow. The paleness of the gesture throws Karkat for a loop. “I said when you're ready. Pay attention, dude.”  
  
“I just...”  
  
“I get it.” He kisses along Karkat's jawline. “I won't do anything unless you're comfortable, yeah?”  
  
“Yes, I...” Karkat trails off.  
  
“How about you hang around the workshop a while longer, though?” Dirk murmurs in his ear.  
  
“I could definitely do that,” Karkat replies, and his mouth is overtaken by Dirk's once again.


	12. Chapter 12

When Rose is told that Karkat is with Dirk in his workshop, she is fully prepared for the possibility of walking in on something iniquitous. It doesn't stop her from barging in anyway, but it does make her stop in her tracks when the image she is met with turns out to be unexpectedly wholesome.  
  
Dirk and Karkat are sitting crosslegged on the floor, fully clothed and not engaged in any shenanigans. Dirk seems to be educating Karkat about the inner workings of Sawtooth, lying on the floor in pieces. They both look up at her like perfectly innocent little doves. Well, actually, one little dove and one cat who ate the canary. Dirk doesn't play well at innocent.  
  
“Ah, there you are,” she says, smiling at Karkat. “I was looking for you.”  
  
Karkat tenses up. Rose's reprimand was aimed at Dirk, and she feels terrible for catching him in the crossfire, but she continues nonetheless.  
  
“Roxy and I have plans for this evening,” she says, softening her voice. “Would you like to join us?”  
  
Karkat looks at Dirk, then back at Rose.  
  
“It's alright, we're done here,” Dirk says. “You can go if you want to, Karkat.”  
  
“Okay,” Karkat says, and climbs to his feet.  
  
“So you're not even asking her what these mysterious plans are?” Dirk says. “Just gonna stroll out of here on her arm and trust she's not planning to feed you to a sea monster?”  
  
Karkat freezes in place, perplexed. Rose glares at Dirk, who has gone back to tinkering and is doing a good job of ignoring her.  
  
“It's a picnic,” Rose says, trying her best to sound reassuring. “Roxy will tell you all about it. She's waiting outside. Do go ahead, please, Karkat. I must discuss some things with my brother.”  
  
Karkat looks relieved to be given a direct, if not an order, then at least instruction.  
  
“I hope you realize that was a completely unwarranted act of sabotage,” Rose says after Karkat is gone.  
  
“Not sure what you're talking about,” Dirk replies, sounding bored.  
  
“Feed him to a seamonster? Really, Dirk?”  
  
“Just one of the many routine questions anyone should ask before accompanying a Lalonde anywhere,” Dirk says. “I'm teaching the kid basic common sense, Rose. Can't fault a man for that.”  
  
“I'll beg you not to underestimate the vast number of things I can fault a man for,” Rose says. “I have enough difficulty setting his mind at ease without you making him worry needlessly.”  
  
“You're a smart girl, you'll get your way eventually.”  
  
“But not before you get your way first?” she says.  
  
Dirk shrugs a bit too casually. Rose can identify the smug self-assurance. She knows he's competitive, but usually it's Dave who gets pulled into his games. Now, however, it appears he has marked all three of his siblings as his rivals.  
  
“Very well, then,” she says, smiling at him. “I accept the challenge.”  
  
He's not the only one who likes to win, after all.  
  
*  
  
Rose isn't sure if Roxy ever got around to telling Karkat where they were going and what they were doing once they got there, because when she catches up with them, Roxy is excitedly telling Karkat about the newest innovations in the field of applied thaumaturgy. Karkat, to his credit, looks like he is trying really hard to pay attention, even if the entire subject matter is over his head.  
  
There's a carriage waiting for them. Usually they would walk there, but Rose doesn't like the way Karkat breathes heavily after climbing long flights of stairs. He doesn't complain, but she can tell that he is only just getting used to physical activity again.   
  
At any rate, they climb into the carriage. Roxy seats herself right next to Karkat, holding onto his arm like a limpet, and this leaves Rose to sit across from them. When Karkat puts his hand over Roxy's, Rose turns her head away, to look out the window. She continues looking out the window for the rest of the short ride there. Roxy continues prattling about various subjects.  
  
*  
  
The lake comes into view soon. There are lamp posts all along its shore, and their purple light is reflected onto the water, giving the lake a pink glow. Roxy bounds out of the carriage the moment it stops.  
  
“Don't worry,” Rose tells Karkat, “she just wants to be the first one to say hello.”  
  
They follow her out, although at a more sedate pace.   
  
Everything looks more or less how Rose remembers it. There's a short pier, which looks a bit more weatherworn, but still well-maintained. And there's the grassy shore, and the simple path along it. There's a willow hanging over the shore which Rose remembers vividly, and though it's been years since she's been here, it looks exactly the same.   
  
It smells the same, too. Salty-sweet, like seawater and rotting grass. She feels overwhelmed by nostalgia for a moment.  
  
Karkat is looking at her oddly. She smiles at him, and wonders what he might have seen in her face.  
  
“We used to come here when we were younger,” she says. “I can't for the life of me figure out why we stopped.”  
  
“It's nice,” he says.  
  
“Oh, we didn't come here because it's nice, we came here to visit Bertha.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Roxy didn't explain about Bertha, did she?”  
  
Karkat shakes his head.  
  
Rose sighs. Roxy is already at the end of the pier, looking out over the water, waiting for Bertha to show up. If she's not here yet, it will still be a while until she deigns to come.  
  
“Let's say she is something of a pet,” Rose says. “She lives in the lake.”  
  
“Like what, a fish?”  
  
“Yes, let's go with that.”  
  
They let the subject drop after that.  
  
True to her word, Rose did bring a picnic basket along, and a blanket to spread on the grass. Roxy returns to help unpack the tea and pastries. Karkat's nostrils flare at the smell of freshly baked goods, but he doesn't eat anything until he sees Rose and Roxy do so first.  
  
Rose makes sure to pour him some tea as well. It's still hot when he takes a swig, and then it's almost comical to see him trying to school his features to look like he didn't just burn his mouth. Rose pretends she doesn't see anything, and Karkat stuffs a scone in his mouth.  
  
They sit in silence for a while. It's comfortable, before it becomes obvious that Karkat really wants to say something but can't quite spit it out.  
  
“Bertha might soon arrive,” Rose says conversationally. “When she does, you might find her appearance alarming. I want to assure you that you are perfectly safe with us.”  
  
Karkat looks more unsettled than reassured.  
  
“Yeah, that's right, Bertha loves us,” Roxy jumps in, giving Karkat a playful nudge. “She'll love you too, I bet.”  
  
“Okay, sure,” he says. “The fish is capable of love. I believe you.”  
  
“Oh, she's not a fish, she's a kraken,” Roxy says.  
  
“The fuck is a kraken?”  
  
“I guess trolls call them something different.” Roxy shrugs. “Sorry, we're not familiar with the particular wordmash you guys use instead of a real name.”  
  
“The Alternian dialect is vivid and descriptive, and it's not my fault is the soft human brain balks before its sheer nuance and complexity,” Karkat retorts.  
  
“Dude, don't pride yourself on your species's ability to complicate everything unnecessarily,” Roxy says. “That's weak.”  
  
Karkat sputters and lobs another cutting remark, but Rose can't help notice that he is more relaxed bantering with Roxy than he has ever been around her. Rose feels a stab of-- of frustration, she decides, not jealousy. She is frustrated with being a half step behind everybody else. Dave has endeared himself to Karkat, Roxy has wormed her way past his defenses, and even Dirk has oozed his way closer to Karkat.  
  
But Rose can't really shrug off the bizarrity of the situation, and she suspects it shows in her interactions with Karkat. She has gotten by up until now by following the strands of fortune, and in retrospect, that strikes her as insincere. Following a step by step plan, with no regard to the emotional content of the relationship, has not done her any favors.  
  
Perhaps she's too much inside her own head. She needs to unwind. Relax. She needs a  _drink_ , truth be told, but through some tragic oversight, the only thing she brought along is tea.  
  
“Karkat,” she says, and he turns tense and apprehensive, “you wanted to talk about something?”  
  
He makes the face everybody makes when they think she must have read their mind.  
  
“I wanted to ask you something,” he confirms, voice faded like he's not sure he's allowed.  
  
“Of course,” Rose says brightly. “You can ask us about anything.”  
  
“Not-- not the both of you, just you, Rose.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
It's probably nothing to be alarmed about.  
  
“Let's go out by the water,” Rose suggests, “and leave Roxy to her biscuits.”  
  
“More like leave the biscuits to  _me_ ,” Roxy says, indeed hoarding all the biscuits on a napkin and not even trying to hide it.  
  
Karkat nods and follows Rose out on the pier. They sit down on the edge, feet dangling over the water. It takes some careful maneuvering on Rose's part to seat herself, since she hasn't done this since she was in short skirts, and she has to be careful not to step on the hem of her dress and tumble into the water. If she did, she might have to allow herself to drown out of sheer mortification.  
  
It's cooler out here over the water, and the breeze is particularly brisk. Rose sneaks a glance at Karkat, trying to determine if he's feeling cold. He just looks pensive.   
  
“When you took me out to the observatory,” he begins, then licks his lips nervously, “you didn't tell me everything.”  
  
“Ah.” Rose blinks, not really expecting this subject to be the one on Karkat's mind. “I didn't want you to be overwhelmed.”  
  
“Because telling me about the stuff was going to overwhelm me more than living through it?” he says back.  
  
Rose is momentarily speechless, because she realizes he has a point. Perhaps her hesitation to embark on a serious discussion about his new position in Derse stemmed more from  _her_  discomfort with the situation, and not his.  
  
“Admittedly, I've been remiss in my obligations towards you,” she says.  
  
Karkat nods uncertainly, like he can't quite believe he's allowed to be right.  
  
“You're going to tell me everything I need to know,” he continues. Rose feels like she's being tested.  
  
“Of course,” she says. “I will supply you with all the documentation relevant to your situation and explain anything you require of me.”  
  
“Alright then,” he says gruffly. “That's good. It's settled. It's settled, right?”  
  
“Yes, Karkat, it's settled.”  
  
He nods a final time.  
  
“So what else did Dirk talk to you about?” Rose asks, because she suspects that Dirk is the reason Karkat brought up this subject in the first place.   
  
“He showed me his work,” Karkat replies.  
  
“Fascinating, isn't it?”  
  
“Yeah, it's something,” Karkat replies with a faraway look in his eyes.  
  
“You could ask him to teach you,” Rose says. “I'm sure he'd be willing to take you on as a student.”  
  
“But trolls don't have magic,” Karkat says.  
  
“You don't necessarily require an active ability for magic to do what Dirk does.”  
  
“You don't?”  
  
“Heavens, no. Quite frankly, I think he just uses it to cut corners,” Rose says. After a moment's consideration she adds, “Give me your hand.”  
  
Karkat hesitates for a second, but then extends his hand. Rose takes it in hers, and presses her palm against his.  
  
“Though trolls don't usually pursue this avenue, I don't think as a species you are incapable of it,” she says. “There's still magic in you. Here we go.”  
  
She slides her hand lower, brushing her fingers over his. He has rough hands, with short, strong fingers. They're hard-working hands, calloused and scarred, and it makes her feel strangely inadequate, like her soft perfumed hands are an ill fit for his.  
  
She pushes these thoughts aside for now and focuses on the task before her.  
  
When the tips of her fingers reach his, tiny sparks start flickering. Purple around her fingers, and bright gold around his.  
  
“Do you see the gold sparks?” she says. “That's the magic you have.”  
  
“And the purple is yours?” he asks, his voice hushed.  
  
“It is. I'm Dersite, so that's how it appears. Your energy is more Prospitian, however, hence why it seems to be gold in color.”  
  
“But I can't do magic,” he says.  
  
“No. And neither can the vast majority of people, but it's still inside you. It still infuses every part of you.” Rose breaks contact, and the sparks vanish.   
  
“It's why I'm useful to you.”  
  
“If you want to be completely cynical about it, then yes. It is,” Rose says. Karkat doesn't have any outward reaction to her words, and she continues, “But strictly speaking, it's not the reason we like you so much. You inspire great affection in all of us, and magic has nothing to do with it.”  
  
This time he does react, with embarrassment and disbelief.  
  
“Um. Even you?” he says.  
  
“Yes, Karkat, hard as this may be to believe, I do have a beating heart under my frosty, unapproachable exterior,” Rose says, trying her best not to sound genuinely hurt. “It is fabled that I might, under the right circumstances, even experience the strange biochemical illusions known as  _feelings_.”  
  
Karkat winces. He opens his mouth, probably for an apology, but Rose is already rising to her feet, and she ruffles her skirts loud enough to cut off any reply.  
  
He jumps up and follows her—it's not hard, she doesn't stomp away, she just walks at a ladylike stroll—and falls in step with her, anxiously opening his mouth to speak, and then closing it again.  
  
“Rose, I--” he begins, when the sound of roaring water drowns out whatever he was going to say.  
  
He turns around.  
  
The sight of a gigantic white tentacle rising out of the lake actually makes Karkat produce a sound that Rose can only describe as the bastard child of a hiss and a shriek.   
  
He doesn't run away, though. Instead, he jumps to put himself between Rose and the tentacle, and continues hissing like a belligerent housecat with a sore throat.  
  
And, well, it's entirely unnecessary, but Rose still feels oddly touched.  
  
“Karkat,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder, “that's Bertha.”  
  
“That's a fucking horroterror,” he says, still hissing.  
  
“Oh, so that's what trolls call them!” Roxy pipes in, jumping to her feet and rushing past them towards the pier.  
  
“It's Bertha, she's saying hello,” Rose continues calmly.  
  
Karkat is still wound up, but he turns to give Rose an incredulous look.  
  
“That's a  _horroterror_ ,” he repeats, like maybe he didn't hear her very well the first time.  
  
“Yes, Karkat, thank you for pointing that out again.”  
  
“You have a horroterror for a pet,” he says.  
  
Bertha wiggles her tentacle and then a cluster of insectile eyes emerge above water, peering at all three of them.  
  
Rose's hand is still on Karkat's shoulder, and now she's rubbing him in what she hopes is an adequately soothing manner.  
  
“It's quite alright, I promise,” she says low.  
  
Karkat drops his defensive stance, unsure, but willing to trust.  
  
“Now, wouldn't you like to say hello back?” Rose asks.  
  
“Fuck no.”  
  
*  
  
In the end, nothing can coax Karkat to approach the lake. He and Rose sit on the shore and watch Roxy climb Bertha's tentacles and ride her across the lake.  
  
On the carriage trip back, Karkat sits down next to Rose. It's a deliberate gesture, and awkward in its sentimentality, but Rose appreciates it nonetheless.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longest chapter yet, woot.
> 
> Word of warning, updates are going to slow down now. There probably won't be one tomorrow, but there will definitely be another one this week. I'll see how it turns out.

The days leading up to Dave's birthday are a flurry of activity. The palace servants swarm the hallways, arguing and carrying and fetching and planning. The Dreamers, it seems, become even busier.  
  
Karkat doesn't get to see much of them, and when he does, they look constantly harassed. Servants pop in and out and ask questions about guests, activities, seating, anything even remotely relevant to the celebration, and even though as far as he can tell everything has been decided for weeks, the Dreamers still have to answer and sign off on the final preparations. He decides to distance himself for a while and let them deal with things without having to worry about him.  
  
He holes up in the library most nights, and practices reading. Rose discovered early on that while he had no knowledge of the human alphabet, he could fumble his way through Alternian, as long as he sounded things out. By urchin standards, he was considered pretty damn educated for being able to read shop signs and use big words. The other wigglers used to be in awe of him. Now he realizes he isn't quite the hot shit he thought he was, but if anything, that has just made him more determined to learn.  
  
Luckily, Rose has a vast collection of Alternian romance novels tucked away in a corner of the library, so that is where Karkat ends up spending most of his nights, slowly making his way through a thick and wordy volume (Rose suggested he start with a few slimmer books and work his way up, but fuck that, Karkat Vantas is not one to let himself be intimidated by a high page count).  
  
The night of the celebration arrives, and in stark contrast with the days before, the palace seems almost abandoned. Karkat walks all the way to the library without seeing anyone, but there's sounds of music and general revelry coming through the walls. He's glad he didn't have to attend, the whole thing strikes him as loud and obnoxious.  
  
He sits and reads until his eyes sting and his neck starts aching, and then he goes down to the small servants' kitchens to eat. There's only an elderly cook drowsing by the fire, but she gladly whips up lunch for him, and then he goes back to his room for a nap. He spends the rest of the night wandering the halls unhindered, trying to learn the entire layout. He maps out exits in his head and finds ideal hiding spots, and doesn't return to his room until his feet start to ache.  
  
Not even a few minutes pass before there's a knock on the door, and Karkat opens to find Dirk. He's still dressed in what he was wearing at the celebration, and Karkat is momentarily blinded by the amount of gold-thread embroidery and assorted frippery on Dirk's purple coat.   
  
“So, still up for that afterparty?” Dirk says.  
  
“I haven't wished Dave a happy birthday yet,” Karkat says. “I should do that, shouldn't I?”  
  
“I'm sure he can take to hear that one more time tonight.”  
  
Dirk takes Karkat a floor down and through an out of the way corridor, and they end up in some sort of study. There's a sofa, matching armchairs and a fireplace, but there are also bookshelves lining the walls and a desk in the corner.  
  
Rose and Roxy are on the sofa, each with a glass in her hand. They take one look at Dirk and Karkat coming in, and then they bring their heads together, whispering and giggling. They're wearing identical dresses, full and purple and embroidered with gold along the bodice.   
  
Dave is seated in an armchair. His coat and cravat, identical to Dirk's, have been discarded and are draped over the arm of the chair.  
  
“Finally,” Dave says to the new arrivals. “Took you a goddamn eternity to get back.”  
  
“Either you quit your bitching or we move to a smaller palace,” Dirk says, “but either way, the ungrateful brat act isn't as cute when you're eighteen.”   
  
He goes to the nearby drinking cabinet to pour himself a drink.  
  
Dave looks frazzled and tired, more so than anyone else in the room, and Karkat feels like he's imposing. But then Dave raises a hand in greeting.  
  
“Karkat. Hey.”  
  
“Happy birthday,” Karkat blurts out, then, abashed, adds “Hi.”  
  
Dave presses his lips together to keep from smiling.  
  
“Thanks. Sit down, take a load off,” he says, gesturing towards the room.  
  
“Oooh, sit down with us!” Roxy says, smiling widely.  
  
“Yes, do,” Rose adds, and scoots over to make room. She pats the space between her and Roxy invitingly.  
  
“Don't do it, man,” Dave mock-whispers. “It's a trap.”  
  
“Let the guy decide on his own,” Dirk says, returning with a drink in his hand and seating himself in the armchair opposite Dave's. “Just because you're too afraid to brave the choppy waters of drunk female gossipbuddies doesn't mean Karkat isn't made of sterner stuff.”  
  
“Yeah, maybe he's made of stuff too chewy for their taste,” Dave mutters and shrugs.  
  
“Oh, hush you two, you're scaring him,” Rose says. “Karkat  _wants_  to sit with us. Don't you, Karkat?”  
  
Karkat nods and, with some trepidation, goes to sit between them.  
  
As if on cue, they giggle and press themselves against him on either side. It's a bit eerie, how similar their voices sound. They don't look much alike—Roxy is tall and lanky and Rose is shorter and plump—but their laughs are identical.  
  
“There, see, ishn't-- insin't-- isn't this nice?” Roxy purrs in his ear, or at least tries to, because she doesn't seem to realize how loud her voice is at the moment.  
  
“Yes,” Rose says, “quite nice.”  
  
Karkat accepts that he has been outvoted on the matter and nods in agreement.  
  
“So we're not doing anything?” Dave asks Dirk. “We're just abandoning him to their mercies.”  
  
“Every man for himself, bro,” Dirk replies. “It's too late for him.”  
  
“I'm sitting right here,” Karkat says, almost without meaning to. He didn't expect it to grind on him so much, being talked about instead of talked to, but it does.  
  
Dirk and Dave look repentant, at least.  
  
“Sorry,” Dave says.  
  
Karkat falls silent again. Rose cards her fingers through his hair at the back of his head. It's soothing.  
  
Roxy, on the other hand, is nuzzling his neck and leaving sloppy kisses everywhere between his shoulder and the side of his forehead. It's less soothing, but still pleasant, even despite the sharp smell of alcohol on her breath.  
  
“It was a hell of a party,” Dave says. “You should have been there.”  
  
“'Hell' is the right word for it,” Dirk mutters.  
  
“What are you complaining about? You weren't the one getting your cheeks pinched all night,” Dave says.   
  
“Awww,” Roxy coos, “I thought it was cute how all the old ladies kept asking you how old you were turning.”  
  
“You don't really get an opinion,” Dave says. “You did more pinching than all of the old biddies combined.”  
  
Roxy laughs, then turns to whisper in Karkat's ear, “Don't listen to him, he loved all the attention.”  
  
It's loud enough to make Dave shift awkwardly.  
  
From there, they move on to telling Karkat about the celebration, all with a strange mix of fondness and exasperation. Dave and Dirk snark about the guests at length, while Rose explains the surprisingly complex sociological underpinning of the event. Roxy doesn't say much, unless it's to contribute a particularly juicy piece of gossip to the conversation.  
  
Most of Roxy's attention, in fact, seems to be on Karkat. While Rose still pets his hair, it's with an air of distraction, like she's absent-mindedly petting a cat. Roxy, on the other hand, seems to be completely taken with Karkat. After she finishes her glass of wine, she doesn't even make any move to get a refill, and abandons the glass on the small table on her side of the sofa. With her hand free, there's nothing impeding her from touching Karkat all over. She kisses his neck and traces his chest, hand lingering over the silver-threaded caste symbol on the breast of his vest. Then she puts her hand on his thigh—not high enough to be vulgar, but high enough for Karkat to take notice—and she rubs circles into it, or drags her nails lightly against the fabric of his pants.  
  
Karkat isn't sure how to feel about it. He doesn't mind the attention. He deeply and categorically does not mind it. But it makes him feel obscene enjoying it so much in what is effectively a public setting.   
  
They smell nice, too.  
  
And they're very warm, especially where their bodies are right up against his.  
  
He doesn't really listen to the ongoing conversation anymore. All he can think about is Roxy's hand, slowly inching its way up his thigh. She probably doesn't even notice it, given how intoxicated she is.  
  
Karkat tries not to squirm. He feels hot and jittery inside, and he doesn't really figure out why until Roxy makes a soft noise, like a content sigh, and it's perfectly innocent, but it sends an unexpected jolt through him. He takes notice of the slow throb between his legs, like he sometimes gets while working his way through some of the more steamy concupiscent scenes in romance novels, but it doesn't feel the same. It feels a lot more immediate and frustrating here and now, and he clenches his knees together, glancing around nervously.  
  
Nobody seems to notice, but he can't shake the feeling that if they look at him, they'll  _know_  how close his bulge is to unsheathing. He eyes the door, but he doesn't actually want to leave. If anything, he wants everybody else to leave, and that is obviously not in any way feasible. But mostly he doesn't want to get up, because he's convinced that the friction of his own pants would cue his bulge to come out and greet the world.  
  
He's so distracted by these thoughts, that when Roxy nips at his ear, it comes as a surprise.  
  
He makes a startled noise, an embarrassing little “eep!”, which might have gone unnoticed, if it didn't come out right in the middle of a lull in the conversation.  
  
And now all eyes in the room are on him.  
  
“What's wrong, Karkitty?” Roxy asks between giggles.  
  
Karkat's jaw clenches. He hopes to hell and back that she doesn't actually expect him to explain.  
  
“Right,” Dirk says with finality. “Roxy, you're officially too drunk. Time for bed. Say bye to the other kids and pick up your toys, we're leaving.”  
  
Roxy pouts and kicks when Dirk comes near her, but he dodges easily, grabs her by the wrist and, in a move so quick that Karkat barely catches it, Dirk hauls Roxy up and throws her over his shoulder.  
  
“Noooooo, I want to stay,” Roxy whines, and punches at Dirk's back weakly. “I'm not tired!”  
  
“See you all tomorrow,” Dirk says, ignoring Roxy, and turns around to leave.  
  
Roxy gives a final weak wave to the room, with such a sad face that one would think she was never going to see any of them ever again, but she lets herself be carried off.  
  
“I'm sorry, I hope she didn't upset you,” Rose says as soon as the door closes.  
  
“Ngh--” Karkat clears his throat and tries again. “No. She didn't do me. I mean she didn't do anything to me. She didn't do anything bad. She didn't-- I'm not upset.”  
  
Karkat grimaces and shuts his mouth, trying to stop the tidal wave of mortification that he is experiencing.  
  
“Good,” Rose says, and leans just a little bit closer. “I was just checking. We wouldn't want you to be uncomfortable.”  
  
She stops petting his hair and begins tracing patterns on the back of his neck. Her other hand is places lightly on his thigh. His heart is pounding so hard, he's convinced she must feel it.  
  
“Rose, come on, back off,” Dave says, frowning.  
  
“Back off? Is that what you want, Karkat?” Rose asks, and kisses lightly along his jawline.  
  
Karkat suspects his judgment is too clouded right now for a logical answer, because he says “No.”  
  
Dave is surprised. He recoils slightly and opens his mouth to say something, but then closes it again.  
  
“There you have it,” Rose says.  
  
“Karkat, you can leave if you want to,” Dave says. “Just say the word.”  
  
Karkat feels a twinge at annoyance now.  
  
“You can leave too,” he replies. Dave is gobsmacked, and Karkat takes some satisfaction in this. He doesn't need to be coddled by some condescending bulgeblock right now. Or ever, for that matter.  
  
“Now, now, let's not be mean to Dave on his birthday,” Rose says with a grin in her voice. “I'm sure he must be feeling left out right now.”  
  
Dave sputters.  
  
“In fact,” Rose continues undaunted, “it would be rude to just kick him out, don't you agree?”  
  
“But--” Karkat starts, and then stops himself.  
  
“But you don't want spectators?” Rose says.  
  
Karkat nods.  
  
“Hmm, that is a conundrum, isn't it?” she says in a low voice. “Alas, there is only one solution. Dave, come over here.”  
  
Karkat and Dave are both startled by this demand.  
  
“Why?” Dave asks, suspicious.  
  
“To keep Karkat warm, of course,” Rose says. “He must be freezing ever since Roxy left.”  
  
Karkat blinks in confusion. Yes, he felt a rush of cold air when Roxy was removed, but he was far from freezing at the moment.  
  
“I'm sure he will appreciate a replacement,” Rose says.  
  
Dave swallows visibly and looks at Karkat, unsure and expecting some indication of what to do.  
  
And the thing is, Karkat isn't sure either. Thinking is pretty hard when the largest part of his think pan is now dedicated to appreciating how wet his nook has become.  
  
Oh god, does Rose mean that--  
  
Both of them at the same--  
  
This scenario did not occur to Karkat until this very moment, and now that it has, he shudders with an unexpected wave of arousal.

“Just get the fuck over here,” Karkat growls.  
  
Dave rises to his feet so fast, he even startles himself. Karkat can feel Rose smiling against his neck.  
  
But Dave is still uncertain, and when he sits down next to Karkat, he's stiff and only pretending to be cool and aloof.  
  
“Perhaps you should give him a kiss,” Rose whispers in Karkat's ear.  
  
Yes, good, Karkat thinks. He turns around, grabs Dave by the collar, and hauls him within kissing range. Dave is surprised by this gesture, and the naked shock on his face pleases Karkat more than anything.   
  
He crushes his lips to Dave a bit too hard—they both gasp in pain and Dave's shades are knocked out of place—but they back up and slow down, and Dave takes off his shades, and it's better. Dave's lips are dry, and his kisses are hesitant little pecks, almost chaste. And Karkat can't deny that in other circumstances he'd enjoy it, but he's been at a low simmer for some time now, and he needs more. He nips at Dave lips, and when Dave doesn't get the message and continues with this virginal bullshit, Karkat snakes a hand to the back of his head and grips his hair tightly. Dave hisses in pain, and Karkat kisses him open-mouthed. To his delight, Dave responds with equal aggression.  
  
Rose does not remain idle. She kisses the back of Karkat's neck meticulously, and simultaneously unbuttons Karkat's vest and shirt. She's doing quite well, for all that she can't even see the buttons, and Karkat doesn't even take full notice until she tugs up his undershirt and lightly drags her fingers over the skin of his abdomen.  
  
His back arches and he gasps as he pulls back from kissing Dave. That's it, that's all his bulge needed. It slides out into the confines of his pants.  
  
Dave blinks owlishly at the sudden interruption. He's panting and flushed, but Karkat is in an even worse state, and he's started whimpering too, just making pained little noises.  
  
He's not used to this, he doesn't know what to do. His bulge is writhing against fabric, and it's uncomfortable, and all he want is to let it out, but he doesn't know if he should, if it's too soon, if his eagerness is disgusting.  
  
“Dave, you should give Karkat a hand,” Rose says, holding Karkat with her arms around his chest. He's thankful, he's pretty sure he'd fall right of the sofa if she didn't.  
  
“What?” Dave says, voice faraway.  
  
“Let's take this step by step then,” Rose sighs. “Unbutton his pants, Dave.”  
  
Dave looks down at Karkat's pants with honest to god surprise, like the fact that any part of Karkat below the waist even exists is an incredible revelation.  
  
Karkat's hands are still gripping Dave's shirt collar, and he tightens his fists.  
  
“Do it,” Karkat says, and then releases Dave. He has to narrowly stop himself from calling Dave some choice names when he moves so slowly.  
  
Dave's hands are shaking, but he complies. He kneels on the ground in front of Karkat and Karkat lifts a leg on the sofa, spreading himself open before him. Dave slowly pops open the buttons of his pants, one by one. He isn't even at the last one when Karkat's bulge slithers out of his underwear and out into the open. It moves sluggishly in the cold air, groping around for something grasp or enter.  
  
Dave stares at it for a very long moment—long enough for Karkat to start feeling inadequate. His bulge is far from massive, he knows, and it's an unnatural bright red, and-- and thin-- and-- oh god what if they don't like it-- what if they think his bulge is hideous--  
  
“Well, don't just sit there, Dave,” Rose chides. “That bulge isn't going to fondle itself.”  
  
Dave glares at Rose.  
  
“I'm strategizing,” Dave replies. “You can't rush genius.”  
  
“Big words from a little boy staring his first blowjob in the face,” Rose says.  
  
Dave snorts, but with a look of determination he grasps Karkat's bulge.  
  
Karkat gasps, more at the thought of someone actually touching his bulge than the sensation itself. Dave shifts his grip, leans down. He takes the tapered tip of the bulge in his mouth and sucks on it.  
  
Rose has to hold Karkat tight so he doesn't buck and throw Dave off.   
  
“The underside of the bulge is particularly sensitive,” Rose says. Her voice is perfectly level, like she's imparting biology factoids, and not offering sexual suggestions.  
  
Dave doesn't say anything, but he pulls Karkat bulge back and exposes the underside. It's ridged there, Karkat notices absently. He never did get a good look at it until now. His life has been tragically devoid of any amount of privacy that would make this sort of in-depth self-exploration feasible, but now it looks like he's about to learn a lot about himself all at once.  
  
Dave holds Karkat's bulge still and licks the underside. Karkat actually keens, and his bulge thrashes, so Dave has to hold it tighter. It feels good, though, everything feels good, almost too much. He takes great gulping breaths and feel like he still can't get enough air. Dave licks another swathe up his bulge, and Karkat almost sobs. The third time is better, it doesn't overwhelm him as much, and it actually feels amazing, as opposed to too much.   
  
Dave continues licking, then suckling at the ridges lightly, planting kisses up and down Karkat's bulge. Some of the things he does feel amazing and some feel alright and a few do nothing for him, but Karkat feels everything adding up, making the insides of his nook flutter. He feels like he hits a plateau after a while, though, and no matter how good it all feels, it's not enough to get him over the edge.   
  
Rose, who has been quiet and observing Dave's ministration until now, sighs against Karkat's neck.  
  
“Dave, you're not holding precious china there,” she says. “Squeeze.”  
  
Dave stops what he's doing to look up at her.  
  
“Excuse me?” he says.  
  
“I said squeeze.” And she reaches down, puts her hand over Dave's and squeezes Karkat's bulge.  
  
The effect is immediate. Karkat's back arches and he moans, long and drawn out, and then, as soon as the pressure is gone, he slumps back against Rose, panting and whimpering.  
  
“Oh,” Dave breathes, amazed.  
  
“Yes,  _oh_ ,” she says.  
  
“Do... do that again,” Karkat manages to gasp out.  
  
Rose lets Dave continue, and he takes full advantage of this new discovery. He continues using his mouth, but the squeezing is bringing out noises out of Karkat that even Karkat can't believe he had in him.  
  
Rose lavishes attention on Karkat neck, kissing and nibbling, and that feels good, too. He clings to her, grasping at her sleeves and holding onto her arms like he might drown if he ever lets go, more and more as he feels the pleasure building again.  
  
It's unrelenting this time, it keeps feeling better and better, against all rational expectation, and then Rose sinks her teeth into his shoulder and he's done. His senses blank out and everything just  _feels_ , indescribable and amazing and satisfying. It lasts a small, insufficient eternity, and then it melts away, setting a deep satisfaction in his bones.  
  
He returns to his body slowly. His pants feel wet, and he's glad they're such a dark material, but Dave is...  
  
He still on the floor, leaning his forehead against Karkat's knee and breathing heavily. He raises his head and flinches when he meets Karkat's gaze.  
  
“Fuck,” Dave says, and jumps to his feet. He storms towards the door and leaves before Karkat can even react.  
  
“What?” Karkat says, bewildered. He cranes his head to look at Rose. “ _What?_ ”  
  
“Dave just came in his pants and stormed off,” Rose informs him.  
  
“What.”  
  
Karkat sits upright and stares at the door. Ugh, his pants are soaked and it's gross. He's probably made a mess on the sofa, too. He's too afraid to look.  
  
“I don't think he was expecting to be so affected by the situation,” Rose says, grinning.  
  
Karkat isn't sure if he's proud or ashamed. He doesn't really feel like he did anything, even though things were certainly done to him.   
  
“What about you?” he asks, and now that he looks at Rose, he notices that she's not exactly unaffected either. She's breathing heavily and she looks back at him with a slightly glazed expression.  
  
“What about me?” she asks, and reaches out to run her fingers through his hair.  
  
“Did you, uh... too?”  
  
“Don't worry about me,” she says with a tight smile.  
  
“But. If I did... and Dave did-- it's not-- it's not fair that you don't get to...” He trails off and swallows. His mouth is painfully dry.  
  
Rose tilts her head in consideration.  
  
“If you insist,” she says.  
  
She pulls up her skirts and bunches them in her lap, then, sitting up with one knee on the sofa and the other foot on the ground, she nods slightly.  
  
“Your hand, please?”  
  
Karkat gives her his hand, unsure, and she takes it and brings it under her skirts and between her legs. He gasps as she slips it into her underwear—it feels hot and damp, but not in a bad way—and there's hair, which he didn't expect, but he assumes must be normal for humans.  
  
Rose guides his fingers into her slit. The flesh here is wet and soft and slippery, and it's still incredibly hot. She pushes his fingers into her nook, but it's only for a few seconds, only to wet them with her lubricant fluids, because she drags them right out.  
  
She uses his middle finger to circle a strange protrusion to the front of her slit. It's not a bulge, Karkat has no idea what it actually is, but it must feel good by the way her legs start shaking the longer she rubs at it. He learns the pattern she likes, the spots she pays attention to, and after a while, she lets go of him and lets him do all the work.  
  
Karkat watches her with fascination as she bites her lip and throws her head back. She makes quiet little gasps when he does something good or changes motions, and she is gripping the backrest of the sofa so hard that her knuckles look about to dislocate.  
  
And Karkat looks at all this and thinks, I'm the one responsible. It makes him heat up again. It would probably make him wet, too, if he wasn't already as wet as physically possible. His bulge is half-sheathed, but aching strangely and not moving in or out.  
  
Rose squeals and shudders suddenly, and he's about to stop, but she hisses “keep going” at him, and he continues to rub her through her orgasm and through the aftershocks that follow.  
  
When she's done Rose fall down on the sofa, not bothering to pull her dress down or cover her legs. She's wearing white stockings, Karkat notes distantly.   
  
But there's a happy glow about her, and the way she smiles at Karkat is languorous and satisfied.  
  
*  
  
Karkat returns to his room in a daze. Everything is a complete blank until he is in the bathroom, kneeling in the tub with the water running.   
  
His bulge is sheathed and aching deep inside him, but his nook is still throbbing. He fingers himself clumsily, enough to draw out a short and sharp orgasm, not as good as he expected, but enough to appease the last nagging demands of his body.  
  
Then he presses his forehead against the cool edge of the bathtub and thinks, with a sour pain around his heart, that he didn't even kiss Rose properly.


	14. Chapter 14

The next day is subdued throughout the palace. Breakfast is late enough to be bumped up to lunch. When Roxy finally decides to crawl out of bed and join her siblings for a very light meal and plenty of fluids, she finds only Dirk at the table.  
  
“Where are the runts?” she asks, as a servant pours her tea.  
  
Dirk shrugs.  
  
“Probably still sleeping,” he says. “I'm not sure how late they turned in. Or early, as the case may be.”  
  
Roxy groans.  
  
“Am I speaking too loud?” Dirk says, sounding a bit too cheery.  
  
Roxy groans again.  
  
“Last time I ever drink.”  
  
“You say that every time.”  
  
“I mean it this time.”  
  
“You mean it every time. Maybe you should try to be a little less sincere, your success rate might improve.”  
  
“Well,” Roxy huffs, “you're-- a-- and you--” She casts around for a witty rejoinder, but eventually gives up and sticks her tongue out at him. Not the most mature course of action, but it does technically count as having the last word. Dirk just snorts and doesn't say anything.  
  
Rose joins them a few minutes later. She has a smile on her face and a skip to her step that Roxy finds highly suspect. The way she wishes them both good morning is also a bit too chipper.  
  
“Party's over, Rose,” Dirk says, looking at her with all the suspicion Roxy is feeling right now. “Don't tell me you got boozed up now, after holding out all of last night.”  
  
“Not at all,” Rose replies, seating herself next to Roxy and opposite Dirk. “I've just noticed what a beautiful day it is.”  
  
Dirk pointedly turns his head towards the window. It's cold and overcast. He then gives Rose a skeptical raise of the eyebrow.  
  
“Yes, quite wonderful,” Rose continues while smearing industrial amounts of jam on a piece of toast.  
  
Roxy and Dirk share a look.  
  
“So,” Dirk says, “sorry to bail on you guys last night.”  
  
“Oh, it's quite alright,” Rose says, and her smile widens a fraction.  
  
“Must have been pretty boring after we left,” Roxy says.  
  
“No worries, we provided our own entertainment,” Rose replies.  
  
Roxy and Dirk both silently regard Rose for a moment, while she ignores them and slathers butter on top of the jam, making a disgusting clumpy mess that only she thinks is edible.  
  
“What exactly was that entertainment we so tragically missed?” Dirks asks.  
  
Rose turns to give him her best shit-eating grin.  
  
“Oh, I couldn't,” she says. “It would be incredibly indiscreet of me.”  
  
The penny drops at the same time for Dirk and Roxy—not that the penny wasn't in the air to start with—but it's Roxy who gasps and then yells,  
  
“ _Oh my god you fucked him!_ ”  
  
Dirk and Rose are startled by this blunt declaration, but they both recover quickly.  
  
“Hardly,” Rose says, calm and poised. “We just had an enjoyable time together. A  _very_  enjoyable time.”  
  
“You did sex things with him!” Roxy says, pointing an accusatory teaspoon at Rose. “You did, you diiiid! You sneaky minx, you're blushing! Dirk, she's blushing!”  
  
Dirk is silent, and looking sour enough to make milk curdle.  
  
“Congratulations, then,” he says, and Roxy can see how hard he's trying to look casual. “I guess now the rest of us are left to angle for second place.”  
  
“Third place, you mean. While I appreciate your... gracefully-offered congratulations, I'm afraid you are mistaken,” Rose says. “It is Dave you should be giving them to.”  
  
Roxy gasps again.  
  
“Dirk, they  _both_  did!” she says.  
  
“Yeah, Roxy, I got that,” he says. “Doesn't sound fair to me, though. You're bad enough by yourself, did you really need Dave to gang up on one pint-sized troll?”  
  
Rose's smile turns frosty.  
  
“Why, Dirk,” she says, all fake-cheer and venom, “I did not realize what a sore loser you were until now.”  
  
“Who said anything about losing?” he snorts.  
  
“You,” Roxy says. “I mean, unless you forgot all the shit-talking you were doing.”  
  
“And it's also quite amusing,” Rose adds, “that you would show concern about Dave and I ganging up on Karkat when you are perfectly willing to treat him as both the prize and the finish line in a competition that is almost entirely of your own devise.”  
  
Dirk is still. Only his jaw clenches as he looks at Rose. She returns his gaze, unblinking and undeterred. Then Dirk rises and wordlessly leaves the room.  
  
“That was a bit harsh, don't you think?” Roxy says.  
  
Rose scoffs.  
  
“Oh, don't worry,” she replies, and dramatically puts a hand to her head, “using my arcane powers of divination, I have besought the Fates to impart upon me the future, and in their wisdom, they have told me...  _he'll get over it_.”  
  
Rose is annoyed, and well beyond getting talked out of it, so Roxy drops the subject.  
  
“So where's Dave?” she asks instead.  
  
“Has he not been at breakfast yet?” Rose says, surprised. Roxy shakes her head. “Then I haven't the faintest clue.”


	15. Chapter 15

Dave stumbles out of bed in the morning, embarrassment still lingering and feet hurting like hell. After dancing with half the court twice, his feet went numb, but now all the nerve endings in his soles are back to doing their thing and they pick up where they left off: screaming in pain.  
  
He also wakes up with a dick so hard that it could probably cut diamonds. He has to take the legendary morning wood in hand and slay the lust dragon of crotch mountain before he can get on with his day, which he does summarily.  
  
He has breakfast in his room—he's not really up to looking anybody in the eye just yet—and decides that this is a good time to be a responsible adult. He calls for the lawyers and lets them know that they can come to his chambers and bring with them all the annoying paperwork they've been nagging him about all month. Stupid, boring things having to do with his legal adulthood, but necessary all the same.  
  
The lawyers don't question his sudden gusto for bureaucracy and appear promptly, even though one is visibly hungover, another so muggy with sleep that she's wearing her hat backwards and the third is eying his colleagues with a prissy, disapproving expression on his face.  
  
They bring along whole stacks of paper, which they insist on explaining to Dave in great detail before he has to sign.  
  
Dave listens, somewhat. His attention drifts in and out, more in when the lawyers start bickering and throwing passive aggressive jabs at each other, and more out when they rattle off long lists of legal terms like Dave if even supposed to know what anything means. He affects an aloof, but thoughtful pose, and makes interested noises once in a while, and signs things when they're shoved under his nose. They don't really catch on that he's ignoring them.  
  
Mostly, he thinks a lot. His thoughts drift towards Karkat and the night before with an inevitability that Dave finds mildly irritating. He tries not to think about it in too much detail, but even so, whoops, boner. Good thing the lawyers are so busy with their own contract law boners that they're unlikely to notice, but even so, Dave angles himself carefully in his armchair and makes sure his shirt is hanging over his crotch, all casual-like and coincidental.  
  
Still, even when he finally manages to make himself stop thinking about  _the thing he's not thinking about_ , he wonders what Karkat is doing at the moment. Probably sleeping. It's the middle of the day. What else would he be doing?  
  
Unless he's currently bumping uglies with Rose.  
  
Haha, no. No, that's ridiculous. It's been hours. Nobody can go at it that long, there'd... there'd at least be chafing.  
  
Oh god, no, stop thinking about your sister having sex. Gross, Dave.  
  
He wants to hide his face in his hands.  
  
Karkat's probably sleeping. Or if he's not sleeping, he's doing whatever he does in his room all day.  
  
Dave's thought drift inexorably towards the image of Karkat with his back arching and his head thrown back as he moans.  
  
“Right, I think that's it for today,” Dave says as calmly as he can manage.  
  
The lawyers give him kicked puppy looks.  
  
“But--” one of them starts.  
  
“No buts,” Dave cuts him off. “Out.”  
  
He's uncharacteristically short with them, and that alone convinces them that he is completely serious. They gather up their things and leave, but not before the lady lawyer leaves a tall stack of papers on his desk and gives him a meaningful look. Yay, homework.  
  
The moment the door closes behind them, he makes a dash for the bathroom. It only takes three short strokes to finish himself off, the whole thing passing so quickly that there's not even enough time for another thought of Karkat to coalesce.  
  
He is left wondering, however, what Karkat might have thought of his abrupt departure. It occurs to Dave that the troll might have taken it personally, and even though he doubtlessly had Rose's shoulder to cry on afterwards, it still feels like a stupid thing he did.  
  
Dave finally ventures out of his room in the afternoon, and it isn't because he wants to. He needs to be holding Court and seeing petitioners. Especially now, when petitioners crowd the hallways in hopes that his birthday will make him more amenable to granting their requests.   
  
Rose and Roxy are already there when he arrives. It's rare that all four of them ever hold Court together unless it's a notable occasion, but Dirk's absence is still a bit curious.  
  
He wonders what stories Rose might have been telling their other siblings, but then, by the way Roxy beams at him and gives him thumbs up, it probably wasn't anything too damning. She's probably saving this juicy blackmail material for a future date.  
  
When Dave finally absolves himself of his obligations for the day and the last petitioner has been sent packing, he takes the long way back to his chambers.  
  
He's considering his next move—it's evening, it's almost dark—when he has to stop in his trcks and do a double take. He catches glimpse of Karkat down a narrow side corridor, and he changes course to go after him.  
  
Dave isn't sure what Karkat is doing. He doesn't mean to follow the troll like a creep, but he knows for a fact there is nothing interesting in this part of the palace.  
  
Karkat stops by a window and opens it, poking his head out. Dave is increasingly puzzled. The window is towards the gardens, but from this angle it shouldn't offer much of a view. Spurred by curiosity, Dave tiptoes behind Karkat.  
  
“Dropped something?” he asks. Karkat flinches and smacks his head against the underside of the window. Dave winces in sympathy.  
  
Karkat lets out a virulent string of curses as he rubs at his head. Then he twists on his heel and looks at Dave, and the curses just trail off.  
  
“You okay?” Dave asks.  
  
“I'm fine,” Karkat replies tersely, and closes the window.  
  
“Let me look,” Dave says.  
  
“I'm  _fine_ ,” Karkat repeats, a bit peevish. He shifts from one foot to another nervously.   
  
Dave glimpses out the window, but there isn't anything interesting there. There's a roof just beneath the window, and Dave supposes that if properly motivated, a person could climb out, hoist themselves down by the raingutter and reach the ground. Dave knows this because he used to be very motivated during his rebellious phase, and this was far from the most dangerous route he'd take to sneak out of the palace.  
  
But Karkat wouldn't. Dave is sure he wouldn't.  
  
Karkat is avoiding Dave's gaze now.  
  
“Hey,” Dave says softly. “Come on, let me at least check to see if you're bleeding.”  
  
Karkat sighs—deflates, really—and lowers his head. Dave parts his hair and prods at his scalp.  
  
Karkat is not bleeding, but he rubs at the tender spot and then, in a show of affection that Dave can only justify through mild delirium caused by all the blood going from his crotch to his heart too quickly, he kisses Karkat on the top of the head.  
  
Karkat is wary when he looks at Dave again and Dave doesn't know what to say. He wonders if Karkat wants to leave, but he definitely doesn't want to ask that out loud. He should probably apologize for running out on Karkat like a tool, but he doesn't feel up to it right now.   
  
“So,” he begins, and Karkat tenses, “according to my official prognosis, chances are good you'll live. Granted, I'm not a licensed physician, but that just means you can't sue for malpractice if you keel over.”  
  
Karkat blinks, and then smirks.  
  
“Fuck malpractice, if I don't live I am going to come back and haunt you so hard, you'll be shitting enough bricks to build yourself a new palace,” he replies.  
  
Dave bursts into laughter, more out of nervous tension than anything.  
  
Karkat can't want to leave, Dave tells himself. He's come so far in just a few weeks; he's put on a little weight, at least enough so his cheeks don't appear concave. And he talks now, he laughs, he sasses people (he sasses  _Dave_ , and yes, Dave will admit that he takes pride in it). He even seems to have grown in height a little, though perhaps he's just holding himself taller.  
  
So he can't want to leave. Dave is just being paranoid over nothing.  
  
“You know,” Dave says, putting his hands in his pockets and leaning against the wall suavely, “we should go on a date.”  
  
“A date?” Karkat repeats. His interest is clearly piqued. Dave congratulates himself on his irresistible charm.  
  
“Yeah, you know, something romantic,” Dave says, and Karkat perks up even more, “go someplace scenic, eat a nice meal, I dunno, that kinda shit.”  
  
“Can I plan it?” Karkat asks.  
  
“Uh...” It takes a few seconds for Dave to adjust to this reversal. “...Sure. Yeah, if you want.”  
  
“Good,” Karkat nods. “I'll let you know the details.”  
  
“Okay?”  
  
Then Karkat walks off, obviously pleased with himself, leaving Dave behind to wonder what the hell just happen and why it gave him a boner all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if there's going to be another update this week. Sorry. I thought I should let you guys know just so you don't get your hopes up.


	16. Chapter 16

Karkat spends the evening after Dave's birthday not entirely sure how he feels about anything, least of all himself.  
  
He is almost shocked when he wakes up and realizes that his body is exactly the same—that  _he_  is exactly the same. He looks at himself, at his flimsy frame, at his nubby horns, at his inadequate appearance, and wonders if it was really himself that night, experiencing those things. He has the bizarre feeling that things like that were meant for more attractive individuals. He asks himself, was that it? Was that what he was here for? Was that what had worried him, what  _still_  worries it? What is he supposed to be feeling right now, because this underwhelming confusion couldn't be it, could it?  
  
It makes his fists clench and unclench when he starts thinking this way. He tries not to, because from here it's easy to work himself up in a panic, especially with how little he actually knows. Rose promised to tell him more, but until she does, his mind is free to fill in the blanks.  
  
He can't help himself from thinking that they could use him a few times and then discard him easily. It's hard to not imagine that someone else might come along one day, someone more attractive and actually desirable, and then he will be quietly asked to leave. They'd be generous, perhaps, giving him money and speaking to him in kind words, but that would not really do much to soothe the ache of having been used.  
  
And he needs to remember that, he needs to remember that he's  _useful_ , not loved. He rubs his wrists to remind himself that he isn't chained, but only because he doesn't have anyplace else to go.  
  
He entertains thought of fleeing, of living on the streets again. He didn't mind it as much as he thought he did at the time, even if it was only because he hadn't yet been through anything worse to compare to it. His hive had been leveled when he was five sweeps old and his lusus killed, just like the other wigglers on the same brooding grounds, when Alternia City expanded. Some took off to the hills and some moved to live on the streets of the city that had supplanted their homes. It was a hard, dangerous life, but it was dignified in a way neither living in chains nor being pampered in a palace was.  
  
He needs to talk himself out of it—that's stupid, Vantas, you'll die cold and hungry in a ditch, you've seen too many dead urchins to be that stupid—but he still feels like clawing at the walls. He reminds himself that if he really wanted, he could leave. No chains, he reminds himself. No physical chains this time. If he really wanted, he could run, sneak out. It's his choice to stay, because he's pathetic and cowardly and this is as much as anybody will ever want him, so he needs to be grateful.  
  
He's about to take a full head-first swan dive into blind panic seasoned generously with self-loathing when there's a knock on the door. He flinches so hard he actually jumps in the air a few inches, and feels relieved that nobody was present to witness his ridiculous behavior.  
  
It's Roxy, grinning wide and waving at him. Her eyes are a bit bloodshot and her posture a bit slouched, but she looks to be in far better condition than the last time Karkat saw her. Karkat's mouth dries at the thought of it, and the back of his neck prickles with apprehension.  
  
“Hey, you're awake, awesome,” she says, rubbing her hands together. “So, I heard you got up to shenanigans last night.” She waggles her eyebrows.  
  
Karkat slaps his face—does the entire palace know? Did Rose and Dave announce it from the rooftops?—but in his shock, he steps aside and Roxy slides right in, closing the door enthusiastically enough to make herself wince in pain at the noise.  
  
“You don't look so good,” she says, giving Karkat a once-over. “Are you okay? What's wrong?”  
  
“I'm fine,” Karkat says, but it sounds so untrue even to his own ears, that he amends, “I'll be fine.”  
  
“No, nuh-huh, that's not gonna fly,” Roxy says, and turns serious all over, like Karkat hasn't ever seen her act before. She places her hands on his shoulders and asks in a low voice, “Did they do something messed up last night? If they did, I mean, you don't even have to tell me what it was, I'll go and whoop their asses good for it, alright? That shit don't fly.”  
  
“Roxy, they didn't do anything,” Karkat says through the ache in his throat. He wills himself not to cry, but he can feel his eyes start to sting.  
  
“Then what's wrong?” she asks softly. She slouches down so their faces are level, and she looks so concerned, that it makes Karkat feel more like crying, not less.  
  
“I don't know what to do now,” he blurts out.  
  
“Aw, honey. Do you want a hug?” She opens her arms.  
  
What Karkat wants-- what Karkat  _needs_  is a moirail, but failing that, he has Roxy. He nods, and she sweeps him into her arms and holds him tightly. She's warm and soft and Karkat decides that it's nice.  
  
“That's what you're worried about? That they're not going to still respect you in the morning?” Roxy says. “Or evening, I guess.”  
  
Karkat sighs and buries his face into her shoulder, but he doesn't say anything.  
  
“That's really it?” Roxy continues. “They didn't do anything to upset you? Are you sure there isn't  _something_  I can twist their ears for?”  
  
“They didn't-- they were fine, they didn't do anything wrong,” Karkat says, muffled by her shoulder. “If you're so gung-ho about it, you could twist your own ears. You were pawing me like a winter coat at a cheap tailorshop.”  
  
“What?” Roxy laughs, then pauses. “What?” she repeats, this time sounding genuinely confused.  
  
Karkat looks up at her. “Last night,” he says.  
  
Roxy looks surprised, and then abashed.  
  
“Ah, shit, I was drunk off my ass last night, I don't even remember anything after leaving the party.”  
  
“Oh.” Karkat feels a cold chill down his back.  
  
“Not to say I don't believe you,” Roxy adds quickly. “I just-- ugh. Look, slap my hands off.”  
  
“Slap your-- why?” Karkat asks, perplexed.  
  
“For last night. Come on, do it,” Roxy says, leaning her body away from his, but still maintaining her hold on him.  
  
“But we're hugging now,” Karkat says slowly. “I said you could and everything.”  
  
“Yeah, but I'm making a point. Slap me!”  
  
“But--”  
  
“Come on, the sooner you do it, the sooner I stop bugging you about it.”  
  
“You're cracked in the pan.”  
  
“Doooo iiiiiiit--”  
  
“Roxy--”  
  
“Do i—yeow!” Roxy jumps a few steps back after Karkat finally obliges her. “Dude, you have a hand like a brick, oh my god,” she says.  
  
“I'm sorry!” Karkat wails, backing up.  
  
“Nah, it's fine! That's a good thing,” Roxy says. “Means I'll feel it even when I'm drunk.”  
  
“You want me to slap you when you're drunk,” Karkat says in a deadpan.  
  
“If I get handsy again, doofus,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I'm not asking you to go around hitting me willy-nilly, I'm just saying, if I get up to any, y'know,  _shenanigans_  that you haven't signed off on... That goes for anybody else, too. Double for Dirk, I think,” she adds with an evil-looking grin. “He's a big guy, he can really take it, not like us delicate ladies.”  
  
Karkat balks.  
  
“Don't give me that look!” Roxy says, now turning as serious as the grave. “Karkat, we're not mindreaders, we can't always be the vigilant wards of your virtue, or some shit. You have to do that all by yourself. That's your job now. Responsibilities, man, we all got them.”  
  
Karkat breathes in and exhales slowly. He nods. He could handle it. He had sweeps of practice dodging creeps on the street. If Roxy is giving him permission, then it's probably safe to-- to... he's not sure what exactly. He'll figure it out as he goes along.  
  
Meanwhile, he worms his way back into her arms. She gives a short bark of laughter, but hugs him again, and rocks him with a contented hum.  
  
“What... should I do?” Karkat asks after a while.  
  
“A pointed 'move your fucking hand, bozo' might work before escalating to a slap.”  
  
“No, not that, I mean-- what do I do now? How am I supposed to act?”  
  
“Oh, you mean with Rose and Dave? Well...” She silent for a while. “Dave is a soft touch and kind of needy, and little miss Rose know-it-all doesn't really know a lick about relationships. Play your cards right and you'll have them eating out of the palm of your hand.”  
  
“That can't possibly be true.”  
  
“You really need to stop believing we know what we're doing, Kitten.”  
  
Karkat rolls his eyes.  
  
But if Roxy is the closest thing he has to a moirail, he thinks, it's close enough.  
  
*  
  
Calmer and more centered, Karkat goes out to roam the palace. He falls into a routine, scoping out the exit routes he's identified so far, and he has to wonder when exactly a fucking palace became such a familiar sight to him.  
  
He comes across Dave on this outing, and feels all the anxiety that Roxy shooshed away come crashing down on him.   
  
Not for long though. What was it that Roxy said? He's a soft touch and kind of needy?  
  
Karkat can see it, in the way he tries to be casual as he asks for a date. He decides to take charge, and the weird part is that Dave just  _lets him_. He doesn't make even a token gesture of retaining control of their interaction, and Karkat strides off feeling like for once he is the one to have the upper hand.  
  
*  
  
Inevitably, Karkat soon finds himself in the library. He stops in his tracks just a few steps in, however.  
  
Rose is sitting at the table, surrounded by several thick volumes. She looks up at him from her book and gives him a smile.  
  
“Ah, good evening,” she says. “I was expecting you.”  
  
Karkat looks to the door, and then back to her. He shifts on the balls of his feet, unsure what to do.  
  
“Please, have a seat,” Rose says in a pleasant tone, gesturing vaguely towards the chair across the table from her.  
  
And Karkat intends to, but if he takes the seat she's offering, all the way across, it will feel official and she'll be looming, surrounded by all her books, like a legislacerator attending a witness.  
  
He pulls up a chair and sits right next to her. There must be something left of the confidence from before, because otherwise he wouldn't be invading someone's space so recklessly—and certainly not Rose's.  
  
She turns and looks at him, and she smiles, looking as surprised and unsure as Karkat feels.  
  
Rose clears her throat.  
  
“I thought we should start with... ah... I think I had something prepared to show you here. Yes, here it is.”  
  
It's only because he's looking for it that Karkat can see that Rose is flustered.  
  
He makes a mental note to ask Roxy how to handle Dirk. He seems to be on to something here.


	17. Chapter 17

Karkat scowls at the books as if they've done something to personally antagonize him. Though he started out by merely regarding them with mistrust, as Rose continued her explanations, he actually started asking questions and demanding she cite her sources. There were aspects of his position that he found beyond belief, such as the notion that he could demand a sabbatical, or have any legal standing in a human court.  
  
Rose suspects that, at least partially, it's not the books themselves that he mistrusts, but the unfamiliar letters. She can show him where it says what, but the bottom line is that Karkat has to take her word for it, and even though that's something he's willing to do for now, it still upsets him that he has no alternative. His irritability is only increased by the fact that he is revealing his ignorance.  
  
Rose doesn't mind, strictly speaking. He seems much more focused than she's ever seen him. Alert, but not alarmed. He still hesitates and bites his lip or bows his head at times, but then, as if forcing himself, he goes right back to his questioning. She doesn't know the source of this change, but she is intrigued.  
  
“Does it really say that in the book?” he asks for what feels like the thousandth time, peering at the pages with narrowed eyes.  
  
“Yes,” Rose replies. She points to the relevant passage, and then follows the line as she reads, “ _In cases of catastrophic injury impeding the aforementioned Duties from being carried out_ \--”  
  
“Why are you always going backwards?” Karkat says suddenly.  
  
“...Going backwards?” Rose looks at him and blinks in mild confusion.  
  
“The stuff you read. You point from left to right.”  
  
“Karkat, that's how it's written. Left to right, instead of right to left, like in Alternian.”  
  
Karkat leans back, eyes wide.  
  
“Why?” he asks.  
  
“It's just how we do it, I suppose.”  
  
“But it's  _backwards_ ,” Karkat says in a tone Rose has heard a few times before, the 'are humans that stupid or are you all purposefully trying to confound me?' voice.  
  
“That's a matter of perspective,” Rose says drily. “Would you like to learn how to read it?”  
  
“Learn to read your backwards stick scrawlings?” Karkat asks, surprised. “Sure, why not?”  
  
Rose goes to scrounge for paper and pens in a nearby cabinet and when she sits back down, Karkat is thoughtfully regarding the open book on the table.  
  
“I really wouldn't get culled if I was injured and couldn't perform the-- 'Duties'?” Karkat says the last word with a roll of the eyes, as if the author's prudery is something he has any right to mock, when just the other night he couldn't bring himself to utter the word 'orgasm'.  
  
“Of course not,” Rose says. “We'd hardly want to add to your troubles.”  
  
“But what if it's permanent?”  
  
“Still no.”  
  
“But I'd be useless to you.”  
  
In one sudden motion, Rose turns in her seat so she's facing him. Karkat flinches and turns as well, watching her cautiously.  
  
“You keep bringing that up as if it matters,” Rose says. She sounds not so much angry as peevish.  
  
She can see Karkat gathering himself, struggling against his instinct to back down. “It  _does_ \--”  
  
“It doesn't! And you can't possibly tell me you'd want to be killed, because you've survived through too many bad things already, and you  _know_ you can survive through worse.”  
  
Karkat hunkers down defensively, looks at Rose with an intensity she's never seen before, but she can't identify what he's feeling. She instantly regrets both her tone and her words.  
  
“You know what? No,” he says, sounding serene despite the tension in his body. “I don't know why the fuck I'm arguing against you when I know I wouldn't let anyone kill me just because I can't be your fucktoy anymore--” Rose flinches at the blunt term, but remains speechless. “--and I sure as fuck don't care about being useful to the highblood hive mind that comes up with the criteria for usefulness, because I was an aberration the night I was hatched and the fact that I was allowed to leave the caverns in the first place was out of some more genetically acceptable idiot's oversight. But I don't ever fucking want you talking about what I 'survived',” he sneered, “and I don't want you to pretend that you know what I've been through just so  _you_  have something to be indignant about.”  
  
“Okay,” Rose says with a single nod.  
  
Karkat's jaw twitches and he relaxes a bit.  
  
“Really?” he says, now uncertain. He looks like he doesn't know how to deal with being taken seriously.  
  
“Yes, you've made your position clear and I acknowledge it,” Rose says, maintaining a calm and serious demeanor.   
  
“Okay,” Karkat says, trying to appear more confident.  
  
“I mean it, Karkat.”  
  
Then she returns her attention to the table before her. She takes a sheet of paper and begins writing, the Alternian alphabet with the corresponding characters in the common human script in the next column. Rose can feel Karkat's eyes on her, and if she concentrated, she could probably hear the gears turning in his head. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the scrunched up, thoughtful look on his face.  
  
He lasts about halfway through the alphabet before he says anything.  
  
“Fuck, okay, yes, I get it, you're agreeing with me,” he huffs. “Are you going to do anything I say if I use a pissy enough tone of voice?”  
  
“Mm, well,” Rose drawls, frowning exaggeratedly and tapping her chin as if in thought, “I suppose that would depends on what exactly you were telling me to do.”  
  
Then she turns back towards him and waggles her eyebrows.  
  
Karkat recoils.  
  
“Oh god, you're doing the eyebrow thing,” he groans.  
  
Rose is fairly certain she's never done 'the eyebrow thing' in front of Karkat before, so he must've gotten it from Roxy, or maybe Dave. Still, she doesn't stop.  
  
“No, stop,” Karkat says as his arms flail about. “Cease. Desist.”  
  
“Why, Karkat, I'm sure I don't know what you mean,” Rose continues, even though her forehead muscles are getting fatigued, “I'm not doing anything.”  
  
Karkat makes a scoffing sound, which turns into a rusty chuckle. There's a smile threatening to appear on his face.  
  
“Stop before I do something drastic!” he threatens, but it isn't very convincing when his attempts at looking serious just make his lower lip wibble.  
  
Rose doesn't believe he'll do anything other than break down laughing until he puts his hands on the sides of her face, hauls her closer and kisses her. She makes a surprised sound and grabs at his shirt for balance.   
  
It's sudden, of course, but the real source of her surprise becomes the fact that he's actually quite good at this kind of thing. He's focused on the job at hand with a single-mindedness that Rose didn't think she'd find appealing until just now.  
  
His thumb rubs faint circles on her cheek. He probably doesn't even notice he's doing it. It's incredibly endearing. She chuckles.  
  
He breaks off the kiss to look at her.  
  
“What?” he says, voice gruff and annoyed.  
  
“The first time I kissed someone I fell down a flight of stairs,” she says.  
  
His face is perfectly blank.  
  
“Okay,” he says in a neutral voice. “I don't know what brought this on, but I think you're safe this time.”  
  
Rose flushes in embarrassment. She doesn't know why she said it either. It was something she would have preferred to take with her to the grave, but the cat, as they say, is out of the bag now. They're still nose to nose, making the conversation seem all the more intimate.  
  
“I was drunk at the time, it was hardly my fault,” she mutters.  
  
“Did someone other than you make you drunk?”   
  
“No,” she admits.  
  
“Then maybe you should consider the possibility that it  _might_  have been your fault?”  
  
Rose looks at him from under her eyelashes.  
  
“You've got a smart mouth underneath it all, don't you?” she asks.  
  
He looks uncertain how to respond. Rose tilts her head slightly.  
  
“I like your hands,” she says. She doesn't intend to sound sultry, but that's how it comes out, so she rolls with it. She maintains eye contact as she turns her face to the side and takes one of his thumbs into her mouth. She swirls her tongue against the pad and watches the bob of his throat as he swallows. She sucks on his thumb slightly, and his pupils dilate, like a cat's after it sees something interesting. She wonders if maybe he's thinking about how Dave sucked on the tip of his bulge. She certainly is.  
  
Her hands release his shirt and fall down to his thighs.  
  
“Rose, um,” he says, staring at her lips. “In the middle of the library?”  
  
“It's well after midnight,” she says. “Hardly anyone is even awake, and even then, I doubt it's because they've got a sudden urge to research something in the library.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
In truth, he has a point. The library is still a shared space and the door is unlocked. But the thought of a sexual encounter hidden between the rows of bookshelves is an exhilarating one to Rose, and she plans to seize this opportunity.  
  
“Okay,” he says, and begins kissing her again.  
  
Rose's hands seek out the waist of his pants, and she gropes for his buttons blindly. Karkat moves his hands from her face and he struggles with the hem of her dress for a while. Rose doesn't understand why until her feels his touch on the side of her knee.  
  
She has only managed to undo one of the buttons on his pants when they hear the door handle turn. They jump apart at the same time and turn around just as the door swings open.  
  
They're not fooling anyone, of course. They're both breathing heavily and Rose has to tug her skirt down to cover her knees. Karkat is fumbling with his button, torn between being discreet and just getting the damn thing closed already.  
  
When they turn to look at the interloper, they discover it's Dirk. He leans against the door frame with an insufferable smirk on his face.  
  
“Didn't mean to interrupt,” he says, sounding about as smarmy as Rose expects.  
  
“We were just leaving,” Rose replies.   
  
Karkat is surprised at her coldness. He looks between the two humans, frowning.  
  
“Better than if I'd walked in as you were just coming,” Dirk says.  
  
Karkat is beginning to look distressed. Rose takes him by the hand.  
  
“As I've said, we're leaving,” she repeats.  
  
Karkat lets himself be led out of the library without any fuss. Dirk shrugs and moves out of the way to let them pass, and Karkat gives him a furtive glance, but doesn't dare go against Rose.  
  
Rose drags him along almost halfway to her room before she stops in the middle of the hallway and sighs.  
  
What does she intend to do? Take him to her room and continue where they left off? Karkat looks uncomfortable more than anything. He shifts his weight awkwardly and avoids her gaze.  
  
“I'm sorry, I suppose I was wrong about the level of privacy we could enjoy in the library,” she says. “You should go, we'll continue our business some other night.”  
  
She doesn't mention if she means the reading lessons or the necking, so he can assume what he'd like. She kisses him on the cheek and wishes him good night.  
  
He nods absently, and then kisses her on the cheek as well.  
  
“Good night, Rose,” he says.  
  
She wonders if she is imagining it, or if he actually does sound a little disappointed. Probably just wishful thinking, she decides.


	18. Chapter 18

Roxy wakes up just moments before the knock on the door. She fumbles for the lamp, but when she can't find the switch, she sighs and sends a spark of magic in the air. It hits the lamp and the light bulb fortunately doesn't explode, though it shines a bit brighter than it normally would.  
  
She hops out of bed, struggling to untangle herself from the bedclothes, and goes right for the door. There must be something exciting going on if someone is willing to wake her up in the middle of the night. She can't remember the last time it's happened.  
  
Roxy opens the door to find Karkat.  
  
She surreptitiously smooths down her hair.  
  
“Karkat, is something wrong?”  
  
“Fuck, I woke you up,” he mutters. “Sorry, I'll just--”  
  
He starts shuffling down the hall.  
  
“No, it's okay!” Roxy says quickly. “Now I'm really curious about why you're here. If you don't come in and tell me, it's just going to keep me up all night,” she says.  
  
She can see him go through several different replies in his head, just by the way his face changes, but he finally settles on “It's stupid.”  
  
“I bet it's not and you're just saying that because you don't want to tell me,” Roxy says, putting on her best pout.  
  
Karkat rolls his eyes and allows himself to be dragged into Roxy's room.  
  
She has to shoo away a cat to make room for him in an armchair. He sits down gingerly, visibly uncomfortable, and adjusts his position several times. Roxy flops down on a sofa. There's a quilt hanging off the back of the sofa, and she pulls it off and wraps it around her shoulders.  
  
“Come on, dish the dirt. What's up?” she says.  
  
“I don't know?” he says. “I was in the library with Rose and, uh...”  
  
“And?”  
  
“Dirk walked in. And Rose started acting weird.”  
  
“Crap,” Roxy mutters, “did they get in a fight in front of you?”  
  
Karkat bristles in alarm and Roxy immediately regrets her words.  
  
“No!” he says. “What? Why would they get in a fight?”  
  
Roxy cringes. She didn't even mean to say that out loud. Of course Dirk and Rose wouldn't get in a fight in front of Karkat. They'd just snipe at each other with bitchy little one-liners.   
  
“No reason, it's nothing,” Roxy says, pasting a smile on her face.  
  
“Bullshit,” Karkat says, and grinds his jaw in frustration. “What's actually going on?”  
  
“Just some family drama, you don't need to worry about it.”  
  
Karkat falls silent, and Roxy thinks for a moment that he's going to drop it. Instead, he asks in a low voice, “Is it about me?”  
  
Roxy mulls over the question.   
  
“It... isn't...  _not_  about you?”  
  
“So it  _is_  about me.”  
  
“I didn't say that.”  
  
“Roxy, I'm not here because I'm interested in the exact fucking configuration of words you would use to describe the situation, I just want to know what the hell is going on!”  
  
“Euuurrrgh...”  
  
Roxy lies down on the sofa, curling up on her side and covering her head with the quilt.  
  
“I'm not even involved in their stupid drama,” she says.  
  
Karkat is silent, so Roxy sits there for a while. She gets overheated quickly in the quilt-sauna, but she doesn't know what to say to Karkat so she chooses physical discomfort over social awkwardness.   
  
She feels like she's a hair short of suffocation when she finally hears Karkat move. He tugs the quilt off her face and she squints in the diffuse lamplight.  
  
“Just tell me what I did wrong,” he says. His voice is soft and his eyes are sad, and seeing him like this makes Roxy go all wobbly on the inside.  
  
“Honey, no,” she says, and reaches up to stroke his cheek. The angle isn't very good, so she ends up sort of brushing the back of her hand against an ear. “You didn't do anything wrong.”  
  
Karkat looks doubtful.  
  
“And really,” Roxy says, raising herself up on her elbows, “they weren't fighting  _about_  you, they were fighting  _over_  you.”  
  
“What does that even mean,” Karkat grumbles.  
  
“That you're a hot piece of ass,” Roxy says with a shrug.  
  
Karkat rolls his eyes. Roxy sits up and tugs him to sit down next to her. He does so, though he stares off into space with a distracted look on his face.  
  
“It's just that I got the feeling Dirk was really upset with me over-- uh. That he didn't want me to-- That he... I'm not going to find any good way to phrase it, point is, he seemed pissed.”  
  
“Really? What did he walk in on you and Rose doing, anyway?”  
  
Karkat doesn't answer, just looks slightly flustered.  
  
“Oh no way, did he catch you with your pants down?”  
  
“No!” Karkat says quickly, and shifts uncomfortably. “There was no catching, pants down or otherwise. But if there  _had been_ , it would have been exclusively pants up. Which it wasn't. Catching, I mean, not pants up. It was definitely pants up, it was just not catching.”  
  
“Okay, then what were you doing?” Roxy says. “With your pants up, of course.”  
  
“If you  _must_  know,” Karkat says peevishly, “Rose was in the middle of educating me on how humans do it.” A pause. Roxy raises an eyebrow and Karkat flinches as he realizes his slip. “Do things, I meant do things! That's what I said. She was going to teach me how to read your weird human script.”  
  
“I'm sure she was,” Roxy says primly.  
  
“She was.”  
  
“Uh huh.”  
  
“We were talking.”  
  
“And I'm sure your discussion was very... stimulating,” Roxy says, managing to keep a straight face.  
  
Karkat gives her a completely unamused look in return. He shifts uncomfortably.  
  
“Maybe talking wasn't the only thing we were doing,” he concedes, “but it's not like we got far. We left the library right after Dirk dropped in.”  
  
“Left you with a major case of blue balls, huh?”  
  
“What do spheroid objects of any color have to do with it?” Karkat asks.  
  
“Ahaha, well, okay, you know how human have different sorts of genitalia and stuff?” Karkat gives a nod as he stares at her in quiet horror at this sudden turn in conversation. “Well, the dangly outtie kind turn blue if they don't... complete the... uh... act.” Roxy trails off as her face heats up. “Or so I've heard.”   
  
“Is it permanent?” Karkat asks in a horrified whisper.  
  
“I don't know,” Roxy replies, stunned. “Huh. Never thought about it.” It isn't like she has first-hand knowledge of anyone else's genitalia. For all she knows, it might be. She makes a mental note to spring this question on someone. Possibly Dave while he is in the process of drinking something. Any question instantly becomes less embarrassing if you use it as a way to make someone shoot apple juice through their nose.  
  
They sit in silence for a while, until Roxy shrugs.  
  
“Anyway,” she says, “I don't know if trolls have the same problem?”  
  
Karkat squirms.  
  
“Because, y'know, I could help...?” she offers. “We wouldn't want this problem to get medical, would we?”  
  
“What makes you think I need any help with anything at all?” Karkat asks. He squirms in place and Roxy puts a hand on his knee. He freezes.  
  
“Because you've been humping the furniture since you got here,” she says.  
  
Karkat looks to the floor. He probably didn't think she'd notice. After a long silence, he mumbles something.  
  
“Come again?” Roxy says.  
  
Karkat mumbles a bit louder, but not loud enough for Roxy to understand.  
  
“Still didn't catch that.”  
  
Exasperated, Karkat turns towards her and says, enunciating every word with annoyance, “My bulge is unsheathed.”  
  
Roxy stares for a beat.  
  
“Okay, cool,” she says, as her mind blanks.  
  
“Shut up, I thought it was going to go back in eventually,” Karkat says, avoiding her gaze. “You just kept pestering me with your hamfisted innuendos.”  
  
“Okay,” Roxy says, even though she's sure she barely made one innuendo, and it wasn't a very inspired one, either. “So. Do you want help with that or what?”  
  
Karkat nods. He looks too serious, when all Roxy wants is for this to be a little bit of fun.

“Are you sure?” she asks.  
  
Karkat sighs—not sad, not resigned, just irritated—and starts taking off his shoes.  
  
“Do you want it in writing?” he says. “Should I summon the lawyers and have them draw up a contract for me to sign in blood? Yes, I'm sure, I want you to ravish me like it's the last day of slurry collection and the drones are at the door, now are you going to do it or not?”  
  
He flings his shoes and then turns to her with a challenge in his eyes.  
  
“I'm gonna do you,” Roxy replies, which isn't one of her more clever quips, but she covers for for it by pouncing Karkat and pinning him down on the sofa.  
  
She kisses him hard, hot and sloppy. His teeth are sharp and she can feel the needlepoints of his fangs on her lower lip when he nips back, but not enough to be genuinely painful.  
  
Roxy has never ravished anyone before, but she thinks she's getting the swing of it quite well. Karkat grips at her nightgown and she grips at his shirt. She tries to unbutton the thing, but she loses her patience quickly and instead pushes it up. She slips her hands under his shirt, feeling the smooth leathery texture of his skin, and the smoother bumps of scars.  
  
She's suddenly hungry for his skin in a way that goes right down to her marrow. She pulls up, breaking the kiss, and then moves down to his exposed abdomen. She trails kisses across his belly, but it feels too sedate compared to the heat from before. She drags her teeth against his skin, but that doesn't feel quite right either, so instead she puts her lips against his skin and sucks. Karkat yelps and grips the sofa like he's afraid he'll fall off.   
  
Roxy smirks and continues nibbling at his skin as she simultaneously works at unbuttoning his pants. She discovers she's not as good at multitasking as she would have thought, but she manages to undo the whole row of buttons, one fumbling tug at a time.  
  
She feels dizzy with impatience when she has to stop to peel his pants off, turning them inside out as she pulls at them and then throwing the offending article of clothing to the side. Karkat removes his underwear himself.  
  
“I'm going to make a mess on your sofa,” he says.  
  
“I'm going to make  _you_  a mess on my sofa,” Roxy replies with an exaggerated flutter of her eyelashes.  
  
“That was terrible,” Karkat says. He's trying for a deadpan, but he's a bit too breathless for glib remarks at the moment.  
  
Roxy grins and leans down to kiss the inside of his thigh. Karkat's mouth closes with a click as he watches her.   
  
It's the first time she's ever seen a troll bulge, and she stares in open fascination. It writhes, a strange organic motion unlike anything she knows, and it's bright and red. It looks like a cheerful little tentacle, and Roxy has to smother down a chuckle.  
  
“So that's your bulge,” she says carefully.  
  
“Yeah?” Karkat replies, confused by the question.  
  
“So, right below would be...”  
  
She puts a hand over his bulge, flattens it against Karkat's abdomen to get a better look lower.  
  
His nook is just as red as his bulge, but wetter. He wasn't kidding about making a mess, but Roxy doesn't really care about that.   
  
“Hold this for me, will you?” she says conversationally.  
  
“What are you...?” Karkat's eyebrows furrow in confusion, but when she releases his bulge, he whimpers and grips it quickly. He doesn't pay it any attention, however, as he instead lifts his head to look down at what Roxy is doing.  
  
And what Roxy is doing is trying to figure out how to best get all up in Karkat's business. Her lack of experience is catching up with her fast, but even so, she is confident that her spirit of scientific inquiry will see her through.  
  
There's a protrusion at the base of the bulge, just as it disappears into the sheath, and when Roxy presses a finger to it, Karkat makes a startled noise.   
  
“Did that hurt?” she asks.  
  
“I'm... not sure?” he says.  
  
She slips a finger into his nook and presses up. She can feel, through the wall separating the bulge sheathe from the nook, that there is a whole string of bumps on the inside, three or four, like little beads on a string, continuing from the base of the bulge inside his body. When she rubs along them from his nook, Karkat's reaction is far less ambiguous; he moans and his head falls back. Roxy congratulates herself on a successful experiment and decides to conduct a few more.  
  
She makes note of all the noises he makes, the little whimpers and moans and breathy sighs, but on a sudden impulse, she brings herself down between Karkat's legs and licks a stripe along his nook and up to the base of his bulge. He gasps.  
  
Roxy almost expects the red fluid to taste like cherries, but instead, it has a strange bittersweet sort of tang. It's not unpleasant, it's simply odd, and before she forms an opinion on whether she likes it or not, she decides to try it a few more times.  
  
Karkat's hand tangles in her hair as she puts her mouth to work again. He watches her between slitted eyes.  
  
She doesn't really know yet what she's doing or what might feel better for Karkat, but he seems to be enjoying the way she moves the flat of her tongue over his folds. His hand tenses in her hair when she slips her tongue inside his nook, and when she moves it upward, licking the little row of bumps on the inside and up towards the exposed part of his bulge, the way he moves his hips into it makes her think that she's hit upon something. A particularly firm lick makes his hips buck, and she has to hold onto his thighs to keep him from moving too much.  
  
His fluids have a distinct metallic aftertaste, but she doesn't mind. Karkat's hand clenches and unclenches in her hair, and sometimes he releases her and smooths down the locks apologetically, but it doesn't hurt and isn't firm enough to push her around. Maybe later she'll ask him to pull her hair with a little bit of conviction. She suspects she might be into it a little.  
  
For now, she has him here, and she plays him with her mouth like he's a musical instrument that only makes cute sex sounds. The way his fingers squeeze around his bulge is rhythmic, she notices, and she starts following his motions, pressing her tongue in as he released, and dragging it upwards as he squeezes. His pants grow shallow and quick, and the rhythm more hurried. Roxy keeps up, though her jaw has begun to ache from fatigue. There's something a lot more urgent about Karkat's noises now, a lot more needy.   
  
Roxy wants to reach down between her own legs, but she also needs to hold on to him as he starts shaking, so she rubs her thighs together and hums. She can feel the exact moment when Karkat peaks, because he makes a long mewling sound she's never heard from him before. Red fluid runs down her chin, more sweet than bitter this time, but Roxy continues until Karkat is well and truly spent.  
  
She wipes her mouth, leaving long swipes of red on the sleeve of her white nightgown. Karkat rises suddenly, reaching out towards her. He seems unsure where to touch her, but in the end he takes Roxy's hand into his. It's stained with red, like her nightgown and her sofa.  
  
Slowly, carefully, he licks the red off her fingers, and then starts kissing her palm, making his way up to her wrist. Roxy can't deal with how sweet he's acting. She suspects he wouldn't react well if she started pinching his cheeks, though.  
  
Roxy grabs the hem of her nightgown and pulls it up. She doesn't get to take it off, because Karkat pushes her down on the sofa and reverses their position from before. He's crouched down between her legs this time, and Roxy hopes she didn't have the same dumbfounded expression of 'what the hell do I do now' as she's seeing on Karkat's face right now.  
  
“You have no clue what you're even looking at, do you?” Roxy asks with a giggle.  
  
Karkat throws her an indignant look.  
  
“I'm figuring it out!” he harrumphs.   
  
Then he nips her thigh, and Roxy bursts into another fit of giggling.  
  
“If you're not going to help,” he says with an adorably fierce pout, “the least you could do is stop laughing.”  
  
This just makes Roxy burst into giggles again.  
  
“I'm sorry, it's not you,” she says, rubbing her still sore jaw. “I just get nervous.”  
  
Karkat nips at her thigh again, but further up and harder. Roxy doesn't giggle this time. She bites her lip.  
  
She reaches down and spreads herself. Karkat watches with fascination. She's probably just as alien to him as he was to her, but if she figured it out--  
  
“Oh--” she gasps as Karkat presses the tip of his tongue to her clitoris. “Got it in one,” she says, genuinely impressed. “Good job.”  
  
Karkat looks embarrassed by the praise.   
  
“I just-- it was sticking out, I just  _figured_ ,” he says.  
  
“I'm not asking you to show your work, Karkitten,” Roxy replies. “Just keep doing stuff, I'll tell you if you need to stop.”  
  
He looks a bit daunted by the request, but he nods. He touches her with the tips of his fingers as his eyes flick from her face to the task at hand. It's exploratory and careful as Karkat familiarizes himself with Roxy's anatomy, but when his fingers dip inside her, Roxy still almost flinches in surprise.  
  
She's still wet from the show Karkat put on. He rubs the transparent fluid between his fingers, probably surprised that it doesn't have the same tint as his.  
  
“Hey, so...” Roxy gestures vaguely. “Are you going to get around to it soon?”  
  
Karkat gives her a stern look, like she's interrupting something very important, but Roxy doesn't really care, she just feels weird to have her lady bits oggled unless she's also getting something out of it. But he brings his mouth down on her and lavishes attention on the small nub he managed to discover all on his own.  
  
Roxy is unclear on how these things are usually conducted, but the way Karkat does it is like an open mouthed kiss, a sloppy mix of lips and tongue that feels nice and warm, but not particularly mindblowing.   
  
“Teeth, teeth,” she says. “Not  _more_  teeth, dummy, I meant less,” she adds after a few moments.  
  
He eases up and changes to just licking her, keeping his teeth away from her flesh. This still doesn't feel particularly satisfying. She makes a frustrated sound.  
  
“Try more lips,” she suggests, not wanting to stop now that they've already committed to fumbling their way through oral sex.  
  
So Karkat seals his lips around her clit and sucks. Roxy gasps, partly from the suddenness of the gesture, and partly in surprise at the way the feeling goes through her like a blast of fire.  
  
“Yes, that,” she says quickly, and Karkat does it again, and then again.  
  
Roxy finally gets the appeal now, understands those noises Karkat was making. She wants to buck her hips too and ride his face like a cheap pony on parade day. She manages to control herself, but she still digs her heels into Karkat's back and whines.  
  
She wants to sink her hands into his hair and keep him there forever; she doesn't, because that would be rude, and if he managed to contain himself, she should at least make the effort as well, but she still wants to. He grows more confident in his motions, and Roxy is sure she even sees a ghost of a smirk on his face. She finds his smugness hot, but then again, at this point, she finds everything about him unbearably arousing.   
  
The way his fingers grip her hips to hold her down is uncompromising. His claws are blunt, but his fingers are strong and digging into her flesh. It's also a bit painful, but she kind of likes that.  
  
She wants so many things at once, and her hands are restless, scratching at the sofa, grabbing the armrest above her head, slipping under her nightgown to rub at a breast. Everything feels like it's running past her too soon and not getting there fast enough, and she doesn't know how to handle all the signals her body is sending her.  
  
She barely has time to notice before the heat building up inside her folds in on itself and surges through her entire body, working its way from the tips of her toes up. It's more intense than anything she's ever experienced before.  
  
“Oh my god,” she says as she returns to her senses. “Oh my god,” she says again as she surveys her surroundings, “we made a real mess.”  
  
“I told you,” Karkat says, untangling himself from her legs and sitting down on the other end of the sofa.  
  
“There's only one solution now,” Roxy says, taking off her stained nightgown and throwing it aside.  
  
“And that would be?”  
  
“Bath tub sex,” she replies solemnly.  
  
“How is that going to clean your sofa?” Karkat asks.  
  
“Well, I never said that's the problem this particular solution was for, did I?” she replies with a smirk.  
  
Karkat opens his mouth and then closes it again.  
  
“Point taken,” he says eventually, and starts taking off his own shirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here is also a short snippet I wrote](http://azzandra.tumblr.com/post/48285573416/for-the-timestamp-meme-half-an-hour) on tumblr for the timestamp meme. Half an hour before Counterpoint, with Dave and Roxy.


	19. Chapter 19

After prolonged bathroom shenanigans, Karkat finds it easy to fall asleep, even with Roxy curled up next to him like a cat. He doesn't sleep for long, though, and when he wakes up, he is momentarily confused and can't remember what he's doing in this strange bed.  
  
He is additionally startled by a cat perched on the nightstand, staring down at him with its dilated, fixed gaze.  
  
“Shoo,” he whispers, but the creature doesn't budge and continues its unsettling staring. “Shoo!” He waves a hand in its direction, but he can't quite reach all the way. The creature leans over and daintily sniffs its fingers.  
  
Karkat admits defeat now, while nobody can witness it, and checks on Roxy again.  
  
She is sleeping like a log, bunched up against Karkat with an arm draped around his waist. Her grip is deceptively strong.  
  
Karkat considers his options, most of which are 'stay here and wait until Roxy wakes up', since he's pretty sure she would take it the wrong way if he left before she woke. Also it's rude or something? Yeah, he's not very well acquainted with post-coital protocol, but he bets it's rude.  
  
He considers going to sleep again, but he isn't really feeling sleepy. Also, it's gotten pretty toasty under the covers and Roxy's arm is heavier than it looks.   
  
Maybe he could slip out and have a look around her room. Stretch his legs for a bit, admire her vast collection of creepy dead cats suspended in glass. (What the fuck is even up with those things?)  
  
Unfortunately, the living cat is not done with him yet, because it jumps off the nightstand and walks over the pillows. Karkat watched the cat warily, but it ignores him completely, stepping over his chest. Its fluffy black tail brushes over Karkat's face with calculated feline contempt.   
  
Karkat opens his mouth to hiss at it, but sneezes instead. And then sneezes again, because there's cat hair up his nose.  
  
The cat jumps off at the sound and hides under the bed.  
  
Roxy wakes up, lifting her head to look at Karkat. She blinks owlishly.  
  
“G'morn'ng,” she mouths half-asleep, before her head drops back down.  
  
It really is morning. There's diffuse sunlight peeking through a crack in the curtains. Very early morning still, but morning.  
  
Karkat is almost convinced Roxy fell asleep again, before she starts talking again.  
  
“Breakfast?” she asks, her voice muffled.  
  
His stomach picks that moment to give a prolonged growl.  
  
“So either breakfast or an animal wrangler,” she says with a giggle.  
  
She rolls over and pulls on the cord and Karkat realizes belatedly that people are going to be walking in here and seeing the mess on the sofa and his clothes strewn all over the place and him in bed, naked--   
  
Wow, okay, it's not going to take a genius to put two and two together.  
  
He musters enough dignity to pull the covers over his head and pretend to be asleep. Or preferably dead. He lies there for a long time, until he no longer hears voices and Roxy pulls the covers off.  
  
“Come on, lazypants, up and at 'em,” she says, and throws Karkat a dressing gown.  
  
He puts it on and ties it a bit tighter than necessary and only after that slips out of bed. Roxy ushers him to the table, seating him and pushing his chair for him, but whatever complaint Karkat was about to make dies down as she kisses him on top of the head and brushes imaginary dust off his shoulder.  
  
It's weirdly pale. He doesn't know how to take it, especially after the last night. He's not sure if he should be enjoying this, though he also couldn't say for sure what is stopping him.  
  
“I'm sorry, I probably screwed up your sleeping schedule something awful, huh?” Roxy says. “You'd be going to sleep just about now, wouldn't you?”  
  
Karkat shrugs.   
  
“It's not like I have to get up before the drone patrol arrives,” he says. Or get to the city dump around prime ragpicking time, but he doesn't add that part for Roxy's peace of mind.  
  
She still frowns a bit.  
  
She has a folder full of papers, which she picks through as you wait.  
  
“Sorry, urgent court business,” she says. “Can't just stroll in there not knowing my head from my ass.”  
  
“No, that would make it pretty hard to walk,” Karkat snorts. She beams.  
  
The next few minutes pass in companionable silence. Two servants arrive with food soon enough and deftly unload their cart on the table, careful not to disturb Roxy's papers. They don't even look at Karkat, much to his relief.  
  
Roxy is completely immersed in whatever she's reading, but she picks up a cup of tea which the servants left conveniently within reach, and Karkat takes this as his cue to start eating. Everything on the table is some permutation of warm and soft, and he ends up making his way through one of every item on the table.  
  
Roxy sticks to her tea, but raises her head when she hears crunching. Karkat is eating a soft-boiled egg.  
  
“Are you-- are you eating the shell too?” Roxy asks incredulously.  
  
“Yes?” he says, looking back just as incredulously. “That's the best part of the egg.”  
  
“Okay,” she says. “Just checking.”  
  
Karkat figures the noise must be bothering her, so he stuffs the last of the egg in his mouth and eats as quickly as possible.  
  
But Roxy puts her reading aside and starts buttering her toast.  
  
“You know, this is nice,” she says. “You're better company than the cats.”  
  
Karkat eyes one cat, sitting on the window sill and delicately preening itself. The cat looks back, its yellow eyes faintly malevolent.  
  
“Yeah, no shit,” he mutters, and starts eating jam straight from the jar (with a spoon, of course, because he's not an ill-mannered boor).  
  
*  
  
Karkat is pleasantly full and ambling his way back to his room when he gets waylaid by Dirk. By Dirk's posture as he sits on the steps, it looks like he's been waiting there for a while.  
  
“Hey, I've got something for you,” he says, and Karkat braces himself, because he doesn't know what to expect.  
  
But Dirk only passes him a slim book with a dark green cover. Karkat is surprised that the title is in Alternian, and even more surprised that it's actually a technical manual.  
  
“How about you come by my workshop tomorrow night?” he says.  
  
“Okay,” Karkat replies, because he can't really think of any protest to make. 'So I heard you've been acting like kind of a douche lately' is more of a conversation opener, and the workshop is at least more private than a staircase.  
  
“Okay. Cool. Eight?”  
  
“Yes. Cool. Uh... Do I bring this?” Karkat asks, gesturing to the book.  
  
Dirk shrugs. “If you'd like. It's a good book for basics, which we'll be covering tomorrow anyway. If you still want those lessons, that is.”  
  
“Yeah, it's-- I do,” Karkat nods. There's a hairline fracture in Dirk's composure, and Karkat doesn't really think this is the time or the place to crack it open fully and see Dirk's gooey center.  
  
Dirk nods once and leaves.  
  
Karkat goes to his room and spends most of the day going through the book. All the Alternian technical manuals he's read so far were far too complex and probably not meant for beginners, but this volume lays everything out clearly.  
  
He catches a few hours of sleep in the afternoon, but mostly he sits in bed and thinks about what he might say to Dirk that could fix this entire situation and make everyone happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had several people ask me whether I was going to update this again, and I always said yes, so if you didn't believe I would, boy your face sure must be red right now.


	20. Chapter 20

Dirk pushes a button on Squarewave's side and the chest hatch pops open.  
  
“Right, I think it's time we got you elbow-deep in robot guts,” he says. “Little bit of practice to go with that theory.”  
  
Karkat peers inside Squarewave's body, apprehensive.  
  
“There's really no substitute for hands-on experience,” Dirk adds.  
  
“Uh, yeah, it's just...” Karkat trails off and looks up at Squarewave.  
  
“Yo, dawg,” Squarewave chirps, as his face recognition subroutine detects Karkat's gaze.  
  
“He's not going to hurt you,” Dirk says.  
  
“I know that,” Karkat huffs. “But--”  
  
“You're not going to hurt him either.”  
  
Karkat still looks apprehensive.  
  
Dirk sighs and holds down the button at the back of Squarewave's neck. He quietly shuts down, his eyes flickering out. Dirk then eases Squarewave from his position sitting on the floor to laying down on his back.  
  
Karkat finally looks reassured and scoots closer. He sits cross-legged on the floor, peering at Squarewave.  
  
“I realize there's a big difference between looking at schematics in a book and seeing these things for real,” Dirk says. “There's a lot of variation in component shape and size, and I customize a lot of my stuff, so don't take it personally, but I think we should check how much of this stuff you can name.”  
  
Karkat shrugs, but he also brings his shoulders up and tenses. Not in a scared way. He looks focused and intent.  
  
Dirk starts with something easy. He points to the largest, most colorful bauble in Squarewave's chest cavity, a glass and metal contained filled with phosphorescent green liquid. The liquid glows at Dirk's touch, magic reacting to magic.  
  
“What's this?” he asks.  
  
“Uh...” Karkat blinks. “A... hermetically sealed thautomatic condenser?”  
  
Dirk would have accepted 'condenser' as an answer, but he's impressed with Karkat's textbook answer either way.  
  
“And this?”  
  
“The... spin axis of the thoracic gyroscope,” Karkat answers.  
  
Dirk proceeds to point to several other things in quick succession, which Karkat names correctly and with increasingly less hesitation. After a while, Dirk doesn't even need to ask, Karkat just barks the answers automatically, and they fall into a rhythm.   
  
Dirk is impressed, but sweat is starting to bead on Karkat's forehead. Dirk realizes suddenly that he didn't give Karkat any indication that his answers were correct.  
  
He stops. Karkat doesn't look up from Squarewave, still expecting the next component to be indicated.  
  
“Hey,” Dirk says, and Karkat looks up. His eyes are bright and alert, not just because of their loud red color, but because Karkat is genuinely engaged in this little exercise. “Got 'em all. That's some teacher's pet level shit, right there. Kudos.”  
  
Karkat doesn't smile, but he straightens his back and tilts his chin up proudly (and he doesn't even look like he's doing it on purpose, hot damn, how cute can a guy get).   
  
“Think we're good to take this fella to pieces?” Dirk asks. Karkat nods confidently.  
  
Unfortunately, this next part doesn't go as smoothly. Dirk digs out one piece at a time and hands it over to Karkat, but Karkat actually holds one glass piece so tightly that it cracks. The next component he holds so loosely, he drops it, and it rolls under a cabinet.  
  
Karkat tries, Dirk can see he tries very hard, but he is getting increasingly frustrated and flustered by his mistakes, and thus they only increase in frequency. When Dirk suggests they stop, however, Karkat refuses.  
  
“I can do it!” he says.  
  
“Like you've been doing it until now?” Dirk retorts.  
  
Karkat's face flushes red.  
  
“We're just taking a break,” Dirk says. “Five minutes and we'll get right back to work.”  
  
“Okay,” Karkat says begrudgingly.  
  
Dirk nods and gets up. He goes to a nearby workbench and finds a clean rag to wipe his hands.  
  
“Dirk?”  
  
He turns towards Karkat, who is watching him as attentively as he did during the naming game.  
  
“Yeah?” Dirk prompts.  
  
“I don't think you should be fighting with Rose,” he says.  
  
“Whoa, hold on--”  
  
“I don't think you should be fighting with  _anybody_ , for that matter,” Karkat continues, unabated. “For any reason, but especially not a reason as goddamn immaterial as me. And if Roxy wasn't kidding and I'm really the reason you two are at each other's throats like a couple of rabid squids on grub disposal day, then you should get a fucking clue and realize you're wasting a lot of time and energy--”  
  
Dirk raises his finger to silence Karkat.  
  
“--and don't raise your finger at me, you douche, you look like a complete tool when you do that,” Karkat continues unabated. But then he stops talking and closes his mouth with a click of fangs, frowning at Dirk.  
  
Dirk coughs in his fist to hide a smile.  
  
“Okay, first off,” Dirk says, “Rose and I have fought over far worse reasons than this. Second of all, we are not fighting over you.”  
  
“...Oh.” Now Karkat looks embarrassed.   
  
“We are fighting,” Dirk continues, “because I acted like what you in particular might call... 'a complete tool'.”  
  
Karkat pulls a face at this statement.  
  
“Then why did Roxy tell me you were fighting over me?” he demands.  
  
Dirk sighs. He throws the rag aside and crouches down so he's roughly at the same eye level as Karkat.  
  
“Because my toolish behavior pertained to how I was treating you.”  
  
Now Karkat just looks confused.  
  
“That being?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“That being like a race horse at the sex hippodrome.”  
  
Karkat's mouth falls open in surprise.  
  
“But we never-- we didn't-- What does that even  _mean_?” he asks, bewildered.  
  
So Dirk tells him. He doesn't spare any details, even if he knows he should, and he doesn't mince words. His siblings would be running the gamut from disappointed to horrified if they knew about what he is doing, because there's the distinct possibility that Karkat will be so disgusted with him that he would refuse to ever let Dirk touch him again.  
  
But Dirk can't really stop himself. He needs to let Karkat know how horrible he really is, and he needs to see with his own eyes Karkat's disgust and repulsion. But Karkat just listens to all of this with wide eyes.  
  
“And that brings us to the library, and I think you were there for that part,” Dirk finishes.  
  
Karkat doesn't say anything at first, just shakes his head slowly, looking at the ground. Dirk doesn't say anything either. He's done talking. There's nothing he could say to fix this situation, and a part of him revels in this sort of petty self-punishment.  
  
“That sounds,” Karkat says, “like the plot of a play I used to see.”  
  
“Alternian street theater?” Dirk says, dredging it up from memory. Roxy said something about that.  
  
“Yeah. I think it was, uh, In Which Two Highbloods Vie For The Affection Of a Midblood And Proceed to Wager On The Outcome... Or was it Wager on Who Will Win The Bet? No, that's not right...” Karkat frowns. “It's been a while. Anyway, I, uh... I sound like the love interest in that play.”  
  
“Approximately,” Dirk grouses. “I'm so sorry, dude.”  
  
“No! No, it's, I, I actually never thought I'd be the, you know,  _love interest_ , like in those plays,” he says. He shrugs one shoulder and looks at the ground. “It's really romantic.”  
  
“Are we operating by some definition of romantic that is synonymous to assholish?” Dirk says.  
  
Karkat glares.  
  
“That play is a classic,” he hisses.  
  
“Right. A classic of Alternian street theater,” Dirk snorts.  
  
“Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was talking to someone with their head so far up their waste shoot they've become a  _critic_ ,” Karkat snarls. “Good job on stating the ass-crackingly obvious, you must be very proud of your mad truism skills. Nobody expects Alternian street theater to be high art, you condescending douchebiscuit. Nobody watching it is ever under the delusion that it's any good, but they still manage to enjoy it anyway on account of not being pretentious pricks.”  
  
Dirk raises an eyebrow.  
  
“Dude, tell me you weren't an actor at some point,” he says very carefully.  
  
“Of course not!” Karkat sputters. “Not just anyone can become an actor! You need years of training, and even then, there's no guarantee you have what it takes.”  
  
“Have what it takes to stand in the middle of the street and scream cheesy lines at passers-by?”  
  
Karkat glares.  
  
“Wait, were you involved with--?”  
  
“Maybe,” Karkat hisses. “Maybe sometimes a troupe will hire a few urchins to help set things up. So?”  
  
“Oh man. Oh man, you wanted to be an actor, didn't you?” Dirk asks, and he realizes belatedly that he might have sounded a bit mocking when actually he is just strangely delighted. Possibly he's a bit hysterical because of the mounting emotional pressure earlier in the conversation.  
  
Karkat crosses his arms and scowls at the floor.  
  
“It would have helped, wouldn't it? To claw your way out of the gutter,” Dirk says, softening his voice.  
  
Karkat looks up from under his hair, uncertain but far less defensive.  
  
“It's not like it would have been that much of an improvement,” he mutters. “I mean, street actors are just barely a step above homeless anyway. I think humans would call them panhandlers. We don't have panhandlers in the Empire. We have street actors instead.”  
  
“Not much, but still an improvement,” Dirk says. “You would have had some place to belong, some people to watch your back. You would have had work and food, no matter how little.”  
  
“It-- it was a stupid dream I had sometimes,” Karkat says, fidgeting with a button of his shirt. “If I'd been accepted into a troupe, I wouldn't have ended up here.”  
  
“Yeah, you wouldn't have ended up with a pack of assholes who treated you like a prize choice of beef,” Dirk says ruefully.  
  
Karkat glares at him.  
  
“I'm sorry, no, that's just me,” Dirk continues with a self-deprecating smirk. “I got confused because of the sheer magnitude of my own--”  
  
“Oh for fuck's sake, are we really doing this now?” Karkat interrupts. “Are you really turning a conversation about me back around to you just so you can verbally flagellate yourself? Should I tell you about the day my lusus was killed so you can have a proper masochistic masturbation session over your own emotional anguish?”  
  
Dirk's mouth opened. Then he very slowly closed it. Then he opened it again. Karkat aggressively raised an eyebrow at him.  
  
“I... don't...” Dirk stopped and cleared his throat. “I didn't mean to, I was trying to point out that--”  
  
“That you're desperately trying to make me feel the way you think I should feel. Yeah. I get it.”  
  
“It's not about how I want you to feel, Karkat, it's about my behavior being inappropriate and--”  
  
“Yeah, okay, you acted like a douche,” Karkat says matter-of-factly. “I get it. But I'm over it. I get it, okay? Sometimes people act like assholes to one another. It's just one of those miserable facts of life. What's a lot worse is that you're trying to make me feel as hurt and violated as you think I should, when I don't feel like that at all right now.”  
  
Dirk's lips tightened. He didn't think Karkat really understood, but he had to stop for a second and ask himself if turning Karkat now into a tool for self-flagellation was any better than treating him as a sex object.  
  
He didn't feel comfortable pursuing this train of thought right now, so he decided to put the matter aside for other times.  
  
“Then let me just say I'm sorry,” Dirk says. “For anything you think I should feel sorry for.”  
  
Karkat nods, and even though he tries to look stern, there's a flash of satisfaction on his face.  
  
“Now can we get back to the important stuff?” Karkat says, pointing to Squarewave.

*  
  
The second time around, Karkat seems a lot less tense. They fall into a rhythm again, even if Dirk feels out of sorts and uncertain.  
  
They break once for lunch, the servants having prepared a spread for them in the garden gazebo, and then they go back to work.  
  
It's not until Karkat starts yawning and rubbing his eyes that Dirk realizes several hours have passed and it's nearly dawn. He hadn't planned to stay up all night, but at this point it's too late to catch any proper sleep.  
  
“I'll walk you back to your room,” Dirk offers.  
  
“I know the way,” he replies.  
  
“I'm just being polite.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
They walk in silence, Karkat staring at the ground with a pensive scowl, and Dirk watching him out of the corner of his eye.  
  
When they get to the door, Karkat invites him in.  
  
“You're just being polite,” Dirk says.  
  
“No, I want you to come in. Fuck you,” Karkat replies. “Are you going to be putting words in my mouth all night?”  
  
“Would you like me to put something else in your mouth?” Dirk replies before he can think better of it.  
  
For a few seconds, there's nothing but a stunned silence, and Dirk honestly can't tell who's more stunned, him or Karkat. He can feel his face flush, but he tries to keep his expression blank. Karkat, for his part, is busy blushing up to the ends of his hair.  
  
“I'd like to see you try,” Karkat replies back, and it sounds so ridiculously stilted and corny, that Dirk bursts out into a short fit of laughter.  
  
Karkat looks affronted.  
  
“What, really?” Dirk says.  
  
“Yes, really, you ass. Are you coming inside?”  
  
“But. After what--”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, choice beef, blah blah blah, I know. But you offered, remember?”  
  
It takes Dirk a few long seconds to recall what Karkat is referring to, but it's true, he did offer. Dirk's mouth goes dry.  
  
“Unless you don't feel like it,” Karkat adds with a tense shrug.  
  
This is not a turn of events that Dirk was expecting right now, but he has planned for this contingency in the past.  
  
Or not planned exactly, but definitely thought about it. Thought about it while his hand was on his penis, maybe. By sheer coincidence.  
  
He enters Karkat's room without a word, and the door is closes behind him soundlessly.  
  
They stand stiffly at first, unsure and looking at each other as if they've just met, but then Dirk raises a hand uncertainly, and Karkat starts moving towards him, and in the next moment they're locked in embrace, kissing each other.   
  
It's hard and sudden, not how Dirk would have wanted to start, but Karkat is clawing at the back of his shirt and growling deep in his chest; Dirk can't hear it but he can feel it reverberate.  
  
Karkat pushes Dirk, steers him towards the bed, and Dirk doesn't realize this until he hits it with the back of his knees and folds down to sit on the edge. Karkat is still standing, so Dirk lifts the troll's shirt and tastes the skin of his abdomen. It's strange and leathery against his lips, but warm, so warm.  
  
“We n-need to slow down a bit,” Dirk mouths against Karkat's belly.  
  
“Uh-huh,” Karkat agrees, but then he unbelts his pants and starts working on the buttons.  
  
It's all too fast for Dirk's tastes, and Karkat seems bent on not letting him savor the experience, so Dirk grabs him by the hips and turns him around, guiding him down on the bed. Karkat yelps and falls face-first into the bedsheets, his struggles with his pants now made even more difficult.  
  
“Gonna be the death of me,” Dirk mutters. He can put the blame for this squarely on his siblings, he's willing to bet. They're the ones who probably taught Karkat to lunge towards the nearest orgasm like it's the last day of sales.  
  
Karkat flips over on his back and kicks his legs in the air as he tries to escape his pants. Dirk narrowly avoids Karkat's heel and by extension traumatic brain injury.  
  
“Slow down and I'll help you with these,” he says. Karkat stills and Dirk grabs his pant legs and tugs them off in one smooth motion. He discards them on the floor.  
  
Karkat struggles far less with his underwear, and Dirk gets why he's in such a hurry when he sees the length of his bulge, swollen and dark red, writhing. Red streaks his thighs, and despite the color, Dirk feels certain parts of himself jolt to attention. That doesn't mean that he's given up on the notion of foreplay, however.  
  
Dirk places his hands on Karkat's thighs, pinning them down to the bed. Karkat's bulge writhes with a wet sound, but Karkat himself stares up, panting.  
  
“Tell me what you want,” Dirk croons.  
  
“Uh...” Karkat looks down with an incredulous expression, 'isn't it obvious?', but Dirk shakes his head and moves his hands down Karkat's legs, towards his knees.  
  
“ _Tell_  me,” Dirk says. “With words.”  
  
He rubs his hands, up and down Karkat's thighs, slowly and firmly in a steady rhythm. Karkat slows down, his eyes following Dirk's hand, and his breaths unconsciously imitating the steady tempo of Dirk's hands.  
  
“You  _know_ ,” Karkat mutters, embarrassed. He's not taking to this as well as Dirk had hoped.  
  
“Do you like this?” Dirk asks instead, indicating his hands with a tilt of his head.  
  
“...Yes,” and he licks his lips. His hands are clenched in the bedspread, knuckles more white than gray.  
  
“Do you want me to continue?” Dirk asks.  
  
“I want you to move on,” Karkat grits out.  
  
“Mmm. Good point.” His hands slip lower and to the back of Karkat's thighs. Dirk grabs two handfuls of Karkat's ass, and the latter yelps indignantly. “You did say move on.”  
  
“You know where I meant, asshole,” Karkat replies, swatting at Dirk's shoulder.  
  
Dirk hm's thoughtfully and then leans down to kiss Karkat, on elbow supporting his weight and the opposite hand moving nearer to Karkat's nook, brushing over the folds. Karkat's breath hitches, and Dirk suspects not from the kiss.  
  
“I was just wondering if you can go twice,” Dirk says, nuzzling Karkat's cheek.  
  
“Go where?” Karkat asks in a daze, as he tries to move against Dirk's hand.  
  
“Where do you think?” Dirk asks in a deadpan.   
  
Karkat takes a second to think and then flushes.  
  
“ _Yes_ , oh god, just do it, I don't care how many times, just get on with it at least one time,” he bursts out.  
  
Dirk doesn't move as fast as Karkat would have perhaps wanted, but a nook feels like a frightfully delicate piece of anatomy to him, and his fingers feel large and rough, so when Dirk's first finger delves into Karkat's nook, it's slow, and Karkat makes a prolonged groan. His whole body reacts; his toes curl, his head tilts back, his spine arches. Dirk curls his finger, and Karkat's eyes roll back in his head.  
  
Dirk feels his mouth dry again, and licks his lips. He's hard, but he doesn't do anything about it yet. He needs more time to enjoy this.  
  
Karkat's hand goes to his bulge, but Dirk whispers, “not yet,” and Karkat stops.  
  
“What?” he asks.  
  
“Tell me what to do and I'll do it for you,” Dirk says.  
  
“More,” Karkat says. “In my nook, just... more.”  
  
Dirk eases in another finger. Karkat raises his arms over his head, like a surrender. His ribs poke up piteously, but something in the lines of his body reaches some dark, deep place in Dirk. He can't look away from Karkat.  
  
His eyes are closed, but he moves at every stroke of Dirk's fingers. Lips parted, his breath hisses out in anguished little puffs. Dirk watches and listens, and absorbs it all into himself like body heat. He likes the slow boil, the delicious agony of the build-up. He likes forgetting about himself as he works on Karkat. He loves the incandescent roil moving throughout his body, radiating outward from his groin, and when Karkat lets out a needy little whimper, Dirk reaches the point where he can no longer ignore it.  
  
“More?” Dirk asks, and Karkat just nods.  
  
Dirk opens his pants with one hand (something he learned to do when he had a different boy in the other hand) as he lifts himself to kneeling between Karkat's spread legs.  
  
When he removes his fingers, Karkat makes the same long groan as when the first one went in. He looks down at Dirk, and his face registers surprise for a second as his eyes fall on Dirk's cock, but then his head falls back and he opens his legs wider.  
  
Dirk slides in with one smooth motion. It's not until he's up to the hilt that he realizes he doesn't know how deep he can go and how quickly, and when Karkat makes a new startled sound and fists the bedspread, Dirk is almost certain he screwed up.   
  
But everything is unusually wet and red when he looks down, and Karkat isn't moving away, and Dirk realizes belatedly what happened. He shouldn't be surprised Karkat has so little stamina, he supposes.  
  
“What, that's all?” Karkat asks, pointing with his chin down. “It doesn't even move?”  
  
Normally this isn't bait Dirk would rise to, but he still huffs.  
  
“If this is all you can handle, then no, it doesn't move,” he shoots back.  
  
Karkat scoffs and smiles.  
  
“You can try to impress me if you want,” Karkat says with a sly smile, like he wasn't the one begging just a few minutes ago.  
  
Dirk accepts the challenge.


	21. Chapter 21

Two days pass without Dave seeing hide nor hair of Karkat. It's mostly just happenstance—a day at court going long, a sibling whisking Karkat away before Dave can—but Dave is still bothered by it.  
  
Rose and Dirk's little disagreement dies down as suddenly as it started, and Dave can just sense Karkat's hand in it. When he asks Roxy about it, she smiles mysteriously, before breaking out into giggles.  
  
“Well, I'm glad you all like Karkat better than you like me now,” Dave says.  
  
“Aww, poor Davey feels neglected!” Roxy coos, and she throws her arms around him and tucks his head against her chest, petting his hair.  
  
Dave laughs it off, but he kind of does feel neglected. Karkat has three other people vying for his attention, and that leaves Dave sadly little time with him.  
  
This is exactly what he's thinking walking down a hall when he feels a hand on his arm and nearly jumps out of his skin, shrieking.  
  
Karkat is just outside a window.  
  
“The fuck, man, that's how people die, don't do shit like that!” Dave says, clutching his chest.  
  
Karkat snorts.  
  
“You're right,” he says, “I shouldn't be interrupting people's self-pity parties. You said I could plan the date.”  
  
“Y-yeah?” Dave mumbles, taken aback by the change in subject.  
  
Dave thought Karkat had forgotten all about the promise for a date, distracted as he was by Dirk's shiny new penis.  
  
Ew. Ewww. No, Dave didn't just think about his brother having sex with Karkat. Why does stuff like this keep happening.  
  
“So?” Dave says.  
  
“So,” Karkat repeats, “are you coming or what?”  
  
“Yeah, sure, bring it on.”  
  
Karkat pulls back outside and disappears from the window.  
  
Dave sits staring for a few second, before he catches on and climbs out the window onto the low roof.  
  
“Is this really necessary?” he asks.  
  
“Yes,” Karkat replies, and takes his hand, dragging him along.  
  
They climb a trellis up to the next floor, and Dave follows Karkat as the latter hoists himself up into an open balcony.  
  
“Do you need any help?” Karkat asks.  
  
“Not from your smug wall-scaling ass I don't,” Dave shoots back. He bites his tongue after he does, because it felt like something too harsh and Karkat might not understand the fine art of banter, but Karkat responds with a short bark of laughter.  
  
When Dave finally reaches the balcony, he's surprised to discover that there is a whole picnic set out on a blanket, and two cushions for seats.  
  
Dave sits down in mild awe and more than just mild confusion. Karkat hands him a cup and Dave is delighted to discover it's half-filled with apple juice.   
  
“I see you scoped me out beforehand, huh?” Dave says and takes a sip.   
  
“Me? Scope you out?” Karkat says gravely. “What makes you think I needed to spy on you to know you like apple juice? Maybe I'm just that goddamn good at romancing the fuck out of people.”  
  
“I'd express some skepticism here,” Dave shrugs, “but I think the fact that you've got a whole royal family lined up for a piece of you speaks for itself.”  
  
Karkat preens.  
  
“So did you haul all this stuff up here yourself?” Dave asks, gesturing to the spread. “Broke into your winter stores just for li'l ol' me?”  
  
Karkat's expression freezes into a look of surprise.  
  
“What's that suppose to mean?” he asks.  
  
“That... this is a lot of food?” Dave replies slowly. “What else do you think it means?”  
  
Karkat peers at Dave with mistrust for a few seconds, but then shrugs.  
  
“Nothing,” Karkat says. “I didn't think it meant anything.”  
  
“Cool.”  
  
Dave chugs down the apple juice and Karkat picks up the pitcher to refill his cup.  
  
“Because, you know,” Dave says conversationally, “it's okay if you don't want to share any of the food you've got squirreled away in your room.”  
  
For a brief moment, Dave is convinced that Karkat is going to throw the pitcher of apple juice at his head and vault over the balcony banister. He doesn't, but the way he goes quiet isn't terribly reassuring either.  
  
“Because it's yours, y'know?” Dave continues. “And you can keep it practically forever with all the spells on your room.”  
  
“Spells?” Karkat grits out.  
  
“Yeah, well. Didn't you think it was a bit weird how all the food was lasting so long without going off?”  
  
Karkat doesn't say anything, but he makes the tiniest, most begrudging shrug Dave has ever seen.  
  
“So you know about it,” Karkat says. “Wait. You've known about it all this time!” His voice takes on an accusatory pitch.  
  
“Karkat, I'm only going to say this 'cause we're friends,” Dave says, placing a hand on his shoulder. When Karkat doesn't flinch away or shrug it off, Dave continues, “ _You suck balls at sneaky stuff._ ”  
  
Karkat gapes.  
  
“I mean, come on. Just come on. You really thought we weren't seeing the huge lumps in your pockets? Roxy told me you actually hid a jar of jam under your vest and pretended it wasn't there. I mean, I didn't think this needed to be said, but we have eyes, dude.”  
  
“Do you want me to stop?” Karkat asks tensely.  
  
Dave shrugs.  
  
“I don't care one way or the other. It's your room, your business what you do in it. But I'm just saying you don't need to hide. Unless you want to or something, which, fair enough.” He shrugs again. “ _Weird_ , but fair enough.”  
  
“Because I'm not stopping,” Karkat says, grimly picking up a plate of finger food and offering it to Dave.  
  
“Just said you didn't have to.”  
  
“Good. Because I'm not.”  
  
“Got it.”  
  
“Great.”  
  
Dave picks up a dainty little appetizer off the plate and eats it as the conversation tapers off.  
  
“After we're done here,” Dave ventures, “do you want me to help you carry the leftovers to your room?”  
  
“Oh my god, shut up,” Karkat scoffs, rolling his eyes. “I don't need your goddamn coddling.”  
  
“Nope. You could survive without it. I know that. But do you  _want_  it?”  
  
Karkat's lips tighten into a line.  
  
“Just a little coddling. You know, just to shake things up once in a while.”  
  
“Fine,” Karkat replies, sighing deeply and rolling his eyes. “But only because you asked for it. I'm doing this as a favor to  _you_.”  
  
Dave grins.  
  
“Awesome,” he says, and pretends not to see Karkat's blush.  
  
At the end of the date, Dave helps carry the leftovers to Karkat's room. He gets a kiss goodnight without even asking for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only an epilogue left after this chapter, and it will be over. But I don't think it's too soon to thank everybody who read this fic and left comments. You are all fantastic people, and I'm really grateful you took time out of your day to read my story.


	22. Epilogue

It's only after the official introduction is finished that Karkat falters. He said all the right words and made all the right gestures, but he doesn't know what to do once he has walked down the stairs and into the crowd of nobles. Everything is bright, and everyone is gaudily dressed, and Karkat's collar feels stiffer and more uncomfortable than it did at the top of the stairs.  
  
Roxy appears at his elbow immediately and latches onto his arm.  
  
“Karkat, have you seen the appetizers?” she asks, twirling him around to walk in another direction. “You were heading towards choppy political waters,” she whispers lower, and pointedly looks at a group of middle-aged nobles with smiles like daggers. “Let's start you in easy mode, 'kay?”  
  
Karkat nods, and Roxy proceeds to introduce him to the Court Poet and her wife, who have appropriated for themselves a whole tray of wine glasses from a servant and taken up four seats next to the wall to have their own little party.  
  
The trepidation wears off as he is drawn into the pleasant, jovial chatter. He charms the Court Poet with his grasp of language by cussing her out when she pries too much into his past.  
  
“Come on, we can't spend all night in one corner of the room,” Roxy says at one point and pulls him along. “Unless,” she adds in a whisper, “it's in the cubby under the stairs, where it's all private.”  
  
“I'll have to make a note of that on my schedule,” Karkat replies. Roxy kisses his cheek and swans off as Rose approaches.  
  
Rose takes his other arm and whirls him around. She takes him straight to the people Roxy steered him away from at the beginning of the night, and he doesn't even have time to express his apprehension before she introduces him.  
  
“Rose, dear, what a delightful companion you've got,” one of the nobles with a sharkish smile says. “Only one, though? Bit unorthodox.”  
  
“I'm sure when you're in our position, you'll be all kinds of orthodox, Lord Raymond,” Rose replies.  
  
There aren't exactly guffaws from the other nobles, but quite a few fans are raised elegantly to hide smiles.  
  
“Still,” a noblewoman says, giving Karkat a look up and down, “they must be running you simply ragged, dear!”  
  
“What makes you think,” Karkat says, “that I'm not the one running  _them_  ragged?”  
  
The noblewoman's eyebrows shoot up. This time someone genuinely bursts into laughter, before trailing off into fake coughs.  
  
Rose gives one last biting smile and guides Karkat away. She strikes Karkat as vindictively pleased, and that pleases him too.  
  
“If you need a break,” she says, “do tell me. We can step out for a few moments and find a nice quiet place together.” She pats his arm and he nods, only moments later understanding her meaning.  
  
By then, she has flashed him one last smile and released him, disappearing into the crowd.  
  
“Sup,” Dave says, appearing out of nowhere.  
  
“Are you all telepathically linked?” Karkat asks. “Or can you just smell when I'm all by myself, like a meowbeast tracking a wounded forest creature?”  
  
“It's instinct, dude, pure instinct,” Dave says. “Like how birds migrate to warmer places during the winter. We're drawn to your hotness.” He punctuates this statement with a fond pat on Karkat's buttocks.  
  
Karkat narrows his eyes suspiciously at first, but then sighs and shakes his head.  
  
“How you holding up?” Dave asks.  
  
“I don't think I mortally insulted anyone yet.”  
  
“That's always a pro.”  
  
Unfortunately, they probably stand in place for too long, because a whole gaggle of elderly courtiers choose that moment to swarm them.  
  
“Oh, Dave dear, you haven't introduced us!” one old lady says, her eyes never leaving Karkat. She has a hungry look about her.  
  
“Uh. This is Karkat. Say hi, Karkat.”  
  
Karkat gives a befuddled little wave.  
  
“Hi?”  
  
The old ladies break out into laughter, and once that dies down, they proceed to coo at him.  
  
Karkat sits perfectly still, like a small animal in the presence of predators. He looks at Dave for reassurance, but Dave is not doing much better himself, blushing to the tips of his ears and shifting from one foot to the other in embarrassment at the intimate questions the old women ask him.  
  
Dirk appears at one point, when the old women are distracted, and tugs on Karkat's sleeve, pulling him away. Dave throws a panicked look, but Dirk only salutes him, as he would a brave captain going down with his ship.  
  
“Dave never learned the importance of an exit strategy,” Dirk tells Karkat.   
  
They go out on the balcony. The night air is cool, and compared to the constant purple-tinged lighting inside, it is dark and lovely.  
  
Karkat breathes in deeply.  
  
“Do you think you can hold out for another hour or so?” Dirk asks.  
  
“Uh... Probably more?” Karkat shrugs. “You know, the way you described it, you'd think it was a war zone,” he says.  
  
“But it's not?”  
  
“More like a mild riot.”  
  
“You've been attending really well-dressed riots, I see.”  
  
Karkat gives a huff of laughter. He stays silent for a while, then licks his lips.  
  
“I can do this, I think,” Karkat says.  
  
“Yeah?” Dirk says, voice neutral and undemanding.  
  
“Yeah,” Karkat says more confidently. “Yeah, I'll have them eating out of my palm by the end of winter.”  
  
“Cool,” Dirk says. “Wanna go for a walk in the gardens?”  
  
“Right now?”  
  
“There's nobody around right now. We could find a nice dark corner and...” He lifts an eyebrow suggestively.   
  
“Run each other ragged?” Karkat suggests.  
  
“I was thinking we could fuck, but sure, whatever you want.”  
  
Karkat laughs. Dirk gives the tiniest smile.  
  
“Yeah, okay, but you have to wait in line for a bit. Other people made appointments before you.”  
  
“You're shitting me,” Dirk says, mouth twisting into an anguished scowl. “Again?”  
  
Karkat laughs and pats him on the shoulder, then goes back inside, alone this time.  
  
He breathes in deeply, picks up a glass from a passing servant's tray, and throws himself into the nearest group, making small talk with a ferocity that leaves them all stunned and still hungry for more. He smiles to himself as he sips from a glass. Compared to starving and dodging drone patrols and surviving as the Condesce's plaything, how could he have ever thought this was scary?   
  
An indeterminate time later, Karkat turns his head to look around. From across the room, Karkat sees Rose, Roxy and Dirk gathered together. They look in his direction, and Roxy raises her glass to him. Karkat raises it back.  
  
“So,” Dave's voice whispers near his ear, “did you just forget about me?”  
  
Karkat tilts his head slightly.  
  
“Dave?” he says, faking confusion, “Dave who?”  
  
“Ha. Ha,” Dave deadpans.  
  
“Are you in any hurry?” Karkat asks.  
  
“No. Nah. We have a whole lifetime ahead,” Dave shrugs.  
  
“That's right,” Karkat says faintly, just now realizing this. “We do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end!
> 
> Thank you everyone for your comments! I am glad that so many of you enjoyed and kept reading this story, even through the long stretches between updates. I am grateful to all of you. :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Equilibrate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5955790) by [wittykitsune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wittykitsune/pseuds/wittykitsune)




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